


P-Day 1: Recruitment

by Siddell



Series: P-Day [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Real World, Gen, Original Character(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-18
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 23,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25974511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siddell/pseuds/Siddell
Summary: When Laura discovers a Mudkip, her life gets changed completely. She's introduced to a secret world, full of mystery and wonder. But between the magic and amazement, she will soon discover that there is still danger looming...An adventure epic set in our world, about humans discovering Pokémon for the first time
Series: P-Day [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885267
Kudos: 2





	1. Chapter 1

The schoolyear was already over, but the university staff had decided to make a special exception for Laura. For some teachers, her projects weren’t good enough yet, so while all her friends would share pictures of their exotic travels, she had the distinct pleasure of postponing her vacation to keep working on those projects. Coming home after yet another long day spent alone in the musty old university building, Laura channeled her frustration into a barrage of words she otherwise would never say in public.  
‘It’s not fair!’ she ended her tirade. Upon hearing no answer, she finally decided to look around the room. Nobody home. ‘Great. Might as well add that to the list.’ Pouring herself a glass of cold lemonade, she turned on the TV and plumped down on the couch. Her plush Mudkip toy was sitting right next to her. As always when she was feeling a bit down, she ran her hand over the soft blue creature.  
‘You will still listen to me, right?’ The black felt eyes stared back at her without a sign of life. Laura shrugged and turned her attention to the TV. Her favorite comedy show always offered some distraction.  
‘You want to run a marathon?’ one of the characters shouted. ‘You get winded from standing up from your seat! How do you plan to run a marathon?’  
Laura smiled. This show always managed to brighten her mood.  
Her smile froze immediately. There had been another sound, almost as if somebody had been laughing with her. She slowly stood up, careful not to spook… whatever the source of that sound was. Her hand was grasping her glass so firmly she was afraid it would shatter into a million pieces.  
‘Hello?’ she softly asked. ‘Is anybody there?’ There was no answer, but all the sounds in the room suddenly seemed suspicious and scary. ‘If you don’t come out now, I will call the police!’ she yelled, a lot braver than she actually felt.  
Between a stack of clean laundry and a heap of dirty clothes – Laura thought to herself that she might needed to separate those better – something started moving. Shirts were falling from the pile, socks started rolling. Laura frantically started looking around her for something to use as a weapon, but aside from a large study book, there was nothing of use in the room. Over at the clothes pile, something now started taking shape. Whatever it was that was hiding beneath the laundry, it couldn’t be more than half a meter tall. Laura started to relax a bit: a small animal she could handle, even without a weapon.  
The creature began manifesting more and more. From underneath pair of pants, two small, blue legs emerged. A sweater was pushed aside by a light blue fin, and through the collar of a t-shirt popped a relatively large head with orange cheeks and deep black beady eyes that looked at Laura filled with anticipation.  
‘M- Mudkip?’ she asked, not realizing she had dropped her glass out of sheer surprise. The little creature immediately ran towards her to lick up the spilled lemonade.  
‘You have no idea how badly I needed that,’ the Pokémon said. ‘I haven’t had anything to drink in almost a day.’ His voice was lower than Laura had expected, almost as low as the voice of an adult man. The Mudkip shimmied around in an attempt to rid itself of the heavy clothing on top of it. The sight of the small, adorable creature that was shuffling around on her bedroom floor made her forget her surprise for a brief moment. A very brief moment.  
‘Wait, wait, wait!’ she said, mostly to herself. ‘This can’t be happening. This isn’t happening.’ Self-assured, she looked at the little critter at her feet. ‘You are not real. You only exist in video games and on TV. This is just a prank by my friends.’ The Mudkip looked at her with a blank stare. ‘Was that all?’ he asked dryly. ‘Yes,’ Laura replied. Because of her exhaustion, it took her a moment to realize she was supposed to be surprised.  
‘Good,’ the Mudkip said. ‘Then sit down Laura, because what I’m about to tell you is gonna take a while. So be patient, and please don’t interrupt me, but most importantly: listen to everything I have to say. You may not believe it right now, but this is a matter of global importance.’


	2. Chapter 2

‘Four beers for the gentlemen,’ Jason said cheerfully as he joined his friends at the table. Reese gratefully opened one of the bottles. ‘Right on time,’ he grins. ‘Tyson was starting to complain a bit too much for my liking.’ Jason burst out in laughter. ‘That dude has nothing to complain about. I’m pretty sure he’s already had much more than his body can handle.’ Laughing, both guys looked across the table at Tyson, who appeared to be only sitting upright because the much larger Tyler was holding him up.  
‘I’m not drunk!’ Tyson yelled indignantly. The other patrons of the bar looked at him with skepticism in their eyes. ‘I can still talk *hic* normally. If I were drunk, that wouldn’t be possible!’  
‘Sure thing buddy,’ Tyler said, as he grabbed the bottle that Tyson was about to let go of one foot above the table. ‘Don’t worry, we all had had a bit too much to drink tonight.’  
‘Well, that’s what happens when Henry and Laura don’t join us for one night,’ Jason joked. ‘Take the most sober people away and what are you left with?’  
‘A bunch of borderline alcoholics,’ Tyler chuckled. ‘Am I right Reese? Reese?’  
A friendly push from Jason woke Reese up from his daydream. The others followed his look to the far end of the bar, where a pretty blonde girl was chatting with the barman.   
‘Do you guys think I have a chance with her?’ he asked.  
‘I’d say: give it a shot. You never know,’ Jason encouraged him. Reese nodded confidently, stumbled up from his chair, straightened his clothes and walked slowly toward the girl.  
‘You really think he can do it?’ Tyler asked amused. Jason looked at his friend for a moment.  
‘On a normal day: no. But tonight… definitely not. He’s too drunk already. Speaking of…’ Jason nodded to Tyson, who was practically sleeping on the table. Tyler pulled him up, shook him up a bit and put him upright in his chair again. With a fuzzy look in his eyes, Tyson stared at the others.  
‘Guys, I think we’re being followed,’ he said slowly. Tyler looked around with overly cautious movements. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said in a soft, mocking tone. Jason looked at him frowning, as if he was warning Tyler not to encourage their drunk friend. Tyler answered his unspoked comments with a conspiratorial look, and said to Tyson: ‘You see that guy there at the bar? The one who is talking to that blonde girl. I think he came in here right when we did.’ Jason and Tyson followed Tyler’s extended arm, which was pointing at Reese, right as the blonde girl walked away, clearly annoyed. Angrily, Tyson crossed his arms. ‘I’m not crazy! All day long, birds have been flying along with me, and I could swear that today in the park, two eyes were watching me from the shadows!’  
Reese joined them at the table again, the disappointment clearly visible in his face.  
‘No luck?’ Tyler asked chuckling. Reese shook his head. Jason gave him an encouraging pat on the shoulder. ‘Don’t worry man, it’ll happen. But listen to this: Tyson thinks we’re being followed.’ Reese looked at his friend with his eyebrows raised. ‘Does he also know that for the past fifteen minutes, he’s been drinking from an unopened bottle?’


	3. Chapter 3

Waking up early had always been a difficult task for Farley. Sadly for him, it was a necessary aspect of a farmer’s life. The problem however, was that there weren’t many things in the Himalaya that could wake you up in time.  
With some effort Farley climbed out of his bed, made something that could pass for breakfast and looked outside. In the high mountains, there were only a few hours of useable daylight, so all his work had to be done within those hours. It was heavy, difficult and ungrateful work, but Farley was proud of himself and his modest living. It had taken him a lot of pain, struggle, patience and sacrifice to create the small field on which he could grow just enough food to keep himself alive.   
The cold mountain air hit Farley in the face the moment he stepped outside. Because the air was so thin this high up, you couldn’t just start climbing the mountains. Every morning Farley first had to wait outside for a few minutes, to let his lungs get used to the air before he could go to his field. Those minutes were usually the highlight of his day. In those minutes, he could take in the natural beauty around him, enjoy the silence, and think about how much worse his life could have been.  
Looking to the south, Farley could see parts of India. The country had an incredible booming economy, but there were still many people living in horrible poverty, and a serious lack of clean drinking water had led to many health issues throughout the nation. On top of that, there was a conflict with neighboring country Pakistan, a conflict that had been festering for 70 years now without a clear end in sight. Some people even voiced concerns that the conflict could lead to nuclear warfare.  
To the north of Farley’s mountain was China, a country that had been taking up a leading role on the stage of world politics. But much like India, China was facing its own problems. Years of oppressive regimes had left a bad imprint on the citizens, and around the world many concerns about human rights violations in China had been raised. People who attempted to change things or document the problems in society were met with heavy resistance and rarely had any success.  
Slightly more to the west was the region of Tibet, which for decades now had tried to gain their independence from China. The Chinese government had so far prevented it in any way possible, and other nations were careful to speak out against them out of fear of retaliation from China. Several Tibetan monks had gotten so desperate that they had sacrificed their lives to draw attention to the cause.  
Farley had decided a long time ago that he would have no part in any of these problems. He would not go protest the Chinese government, he would not attempt to solve the poverty in India, and he would no jump onto the breach for the Tibetan monks. Farley would not be at the center of a large conflict. He just wanted his own personal rest.  
In his short life, Farley had already encountered more than enough problems. His father had disappeared right before Farley was born. A friend of the family had helped raise him instead. At a very young age, Farley had to witness how his mother and the friend of the family were taken away by evil people, probably to sell as slaves. That was the last thing Farley had ever seen of his family.  
The young Farley had fled to the mountains after this. He didn’t know why, he just knew that here, in the high mountains, he wouldn’t be harmed by the people that had taken his mother away from him. The Sherpas were kind to him, and they taught him how to use his innate strength and agility to move around in the mountains, and how to protect himself from the wild animals that he now had to share his new living space with. It didn’t come easy: the slippery mountainsides were difficult to climb, and one wrong step would often mean a fall of several meters down. But after months of training, Farley had gotten to the point where he could effortlessly climb the mountains. It had gotten so easy for him that he would often just go up a mountain for fun and head back down before dusk.  
When during one of these trips, Farley stumbled upon a monastery, he was immediately intrigued by the calm, peaceful way of life that the monks followed. Likewise, the Tibetans were intrigued by the new outsider that had found them, and they quickly accepted him as one of their own. They taught Farley how he could get more in touch with the spiritual side of his being, how he could feel with more than just his body, and how he could speak without talking.  
After a few years, Farley decided to leave the monastery to learn how to stand on his own two feet. But he barely left the monastery when he already felt regret about his decision and fear for the future. The abbot already had a solution prepared: Farley should go live on the same mountain as they did. That way he could visit the monks whenever he needed to, but he could still figure out his own path through life. With some help from the monks and the Sherpas, Farley made a small house on the mountainside and began working on his field. The hard, rigid ground had posed quite a challenge, but if there was one thing he had learned from all his experiences, it was to not let anything stop him from reaching his goal.  
Farley took a deep breath. His lungs were adjusted enough to the thin mountain air. He was losing precious sunlight. It was time to work.  
The tragedy of his family was in his past now. At the time, he was too young to realize exactly what was happening, and the memories were too vague now to really mean much to him. That was the old Farley, that was his old life. This small field, this little cabin on the mountainside, that was his new life. Farley had found mental and physical tranquility. And Farley liked this tranquility. 

_Water. According to many, it’s the basis of everything. Myths about the origin of the planet tell us that before there was land, there was only water. Today still, three-quarters of the surface of planet Earth consists of water. Water is essential. Without it, life on Earth would wither and die. Water heals, it can soothe in the form a warm bath. Or it can hurt in a flood or a storm. Water nurtures, and it drowns. Water helps, or it can destroy even the mightiest structures. It erodes land, it rusts metals, and it extinguishes the brightest flames. But it also cools, carries us to where we need to go, and brings about new species of animals and plants. Without water, there is no life, but too much water can make all life impossible._


	4. Chapter 4

‘I still don’t believe it.’ Laura sat on the couch, her arms crossed and a stubborn look on her face. ‘Pokémon don’t exist! I’m seeing things that aren’t real. It must be from the exhaustion. They shouldn’t make me go to school for so much longer.’  
The Mudkip sighed, clearly annoyed. With a swift jump he landed on the couch and bit the girl in her fingers. Laura quickly pulled her hand away from the little critter, shouting with pain.  
‘What did you do that for!?’  
‘Do you believe now that I am real?’ the small Pokémon asked. The girl nodded, a hint of fear in her movements. ‘Good, then we can finally talk. I get that this might be shocking to you, but…’  
‘Your voice is a lot lower than I had expected,’ Laura interrupted. The Mudkip looked at her angrily. ‘Sorry, continue.’  
‘As I was saying…’ the Mudkip continued with an angry voice, ‘there is a lot that you need to know. As you might have gathered by now, Pokémon really do exist.’ Laura nodded without saying a word. She didn’t want to get bitten again. ‘We have kept our existence a secret for a long time,’ the Mudkip continued. ‘Most people would just be afraid of us if they would know we existed.’  
‘So why did you show yourself to me?’  
‘Believe it or not, we actually need your help.’  
‘My help!?’ Laura couldn’t believe her ears. ‘Why me? I’m no superhero. What can I really do?’  
‘Well technically, in this case you’d be more like the superhero’s sidekick, not the actual superhero. But that’s beside the point. Although, by the way: save yourself the trouble of going to some of those superhero movies. You know which one I’m talking about.’ Laura looked surprised at the little blue creature, which went on without seeming to think there was anything odd about that remark. ‘Anyway, we need your help, whether you have superpowers or not. We might be strong, but there are many things we’re unable to do.’  
‘Like what?’  
‘Well, for one: we can’t free ourselves.’  
‘What do you mean, “free ourselves”?’  
‘You’re familiar with Poké Balls, right?’ Laura nodded. ‘Well, most Pokémon are tied to a Poké Ball. We can’t choose when we exit that Poké Ball, or when to go back in when we actually do get out. A Poké Ball gives the humans complete control over us.’  
Laura hesitated for a moment. ‘That’s not how it works on TV.’  
The Mudkip nodded, an adorably clumsy sight. ‘True, and there used to be a time when it didn’t work like that. We used to have a lot more control over the Poké Balls. We could determine for ourselves when to exit and enter them. But the humans weren’t satisfied with that.’ The tone of the Mudkips voice changed, a hint of disgust and hatred accompanied the words. ‘The humans wanted more control. They didn’t want to work with us anymore, they wanted to rule us, possess us. They started altering the Poké Balls, so that the only one who could decide whether we entered or left the Poké Balls, was whoever owned them. They can recall us at will, no matter how far away we are, and they’re capable of holding any and all Pokémon.’  
The little blue creature stopped for a moment to catch his breath. Laura thought about how to ask the question that was on her mind, and decided to go for: ‘Are those Poké Balls really that bad?’  
It was the wrong choice. It looked as if the Mudkip would explode. ‘Do you have any idea how tiny those things are!?!? In their largest form, they’re about the size of a grown man’s fist. In their small form, they’re no bigger than a Ping-Pong ball! I’m one of the smaller Pokémon, but even for me it’s too cramped in there. Imagine what it must be like for an Aggron, or a Dragonite, or Arceus forbid a Wailord! Some Pokémon are stuck in those Poké Balls,’ – the Mudkip practically spit out the two words – ‘for years, decades, without ever seeing the light of day. You have no idea what that does to a Pokémon! The ones you know from your TV shows, you know, the ones that can only say their own name, those are examples of what happens to a Pokémon when he stays too long in such a prison. They’ve lost the ability to talk, they can barely even think. They can only mindlessly follow the orders of the person that owns them.’  
‘I’m sorry,’ Laura stammered. The sudden passion in the voice of the Mudkip had scared her a bit. ‘I didn’t know it was that bad.’  
The Mudkip shook his head. ‘It’s alright, most people don’t. Matter of fact, most people don’t even know we exist at all.’  
There was an awkward silence for a couple of moments, until Laura asked the question that had been on her mind for a while now: ‘What is it exactly you want me to do?’  
The Mudkip didn’t hesitate for even a second. ‘I want you to free as many Pokémon as possible. I want you to break every Poké Ball you can.’  
‘Hold on for just a moment. Break them? Me? Do you have any idea how bad I am with a hammer? The other day I was putting together furniture, and, well…’ She gestured to a sizable dent in the laminate flooring. ‘Tell you what, why don’t we ask my boyfriend to help us out? He’ll probably love the opportunity to smash things with a hammer.’  
‘No!’ Marshall shouted, surprisingly fierce. ‘We can’t afford to involve too many people. We need to keep the number of humans that know of us limited, at least for now. We need specialists, people with encyclopedic knowledge of the Pokémon. People like you. Your boyfriend is a good guy and all, but he can barely even name us. You have been studying us for years, as far as humans can do that. We need people like you, people who are compassionate, good at heart, people who care about us. Hammer skills come secondary to all that.’  
Laura let herself sink away in the couch. ‘I don’t know if I can do this. I have so many other things to worry about. I have a job, I have classes, friends, family, a boyfriend… I can’t just abandon all that for some assignment given to me by a creature that up until an hour ago I thought was only fictional!’  
The small Pokémon was quiet for a moment. ‘I know it’s a lot, but think about all your famous heroes. Do you think Frodo Baggins was always planning on becoming a hero? Do you think Harry Potter wanted to be the chosen one? Do you think Luke Skywalker always dreamed of joining the resistance and fighting Darth Vader?’  
‘Actually, Luke did…’ Laura started, but immediately held her silence when she saw the angry look the Mudkip gave her.   
‘Do you mind? I’m kinda in the middle of an inspirational speech here.’ Laura made an apologetic gesture, and the Mudkip continued. ‘My point is: they all stepped up when the world needed them, even if they didn’t want to. It’s the same with you now Laura. The world needs you, even if it’s a world that you don’t know yet.’  
The blond girl let out a deep sigh. ‘Alright then. But I’m not gonna be able to do this alone. I will need help.’ Something akin to a smile appeared on the face of the Mudkip. ‘Already taken care of. I will be at your side to teach you everything you need, and I already phoned in some backup.’  
Laura looked at him in surprise. ‘You have a phone?’ The Mudkip let out an annoyed growl. ‘Of course I don’t. Do you see any pockets here?’ Laura started blushing because of the foolishness of her remark, but then the Mudkip added: ‘I used yours.’  
Laura didn’t know how to respond, so she decided to change the subject. ‘Do you have a name? Oh, can I name you?’ she asked in excitement while a list of possible names ran through her mind. The Mudkip rolled his eyes. ‘You can call me Marshall.’


	5. Chapter 5

‘Will you finally tell me where we’re going?’ Laura asked quietly.  
‘Not yet,’ Marshall whispered from her backpack. ‘Find us a cart where nobody can hear us.’ Laura rolled her eyes. Finding an empty cart was easier said than done. The train was fuller than expected for this hour, and even the smallest carts were filled with people.   
‘Go to the upper level,’ Marshall whispered. ‘There should be a cabin reserved for you personally.’  
Filled with skepticism, Laura climbed up the stairs to the upper level of the train. Much to her surprise, there were still some cabins completely empty here. A man from the railways checked her ticket and pointed her to the rear and of the wagon, to a small compartment of just two seats. Quickly Laura closed the door and the curtains behind her and opened her bag. With a hint of a smile Marshall jumped out of the bag. On his head balanced a black cap that Laura had brought for herself. Trying hard to suppress her laughter, she looked at the little blue creature with her eyebrows raised.  
‘What? I like wearing hats,’ Marshall said defensively. ‘It makes me feel like I’m undercover in a superhero movie.’ Laura looked at her companion, not knowing if she should take him seriously. ‘So what’s gonna happen next? What am I supposed to do today? And most importantly: where are we going!?’ The secrecy started to annoy Laura, and she didn’t pay much attention to the volume of her voice. Marshall looked at the door with clear fear in his eyes. When nobody entered, he said: ‘Alright, calm down, I’ll tell you everything. Just keep your voice down. Just because nobody can see us doesn’t mean that they can’t hear us. There’s no reason to get angry or raise your voice with me.’  
‘No reason…!’ Laura angrily shouted. Marshall send her a piercing look. ‘No reason to get angry?’ she continued with a softer voice. ‘You come into my room, throw my entire world upside down, then you don’t tell me anything but just give me a train ticket to an unknown destination…’  
‘Hang on, unknown destination?’ Marshall interrupted. ‘Doesn’t it say on the ticket where we’re going?’ Laura closely inspected the ticket and then shook her head. ‘This just says “deluxe ticket”, it allows us to go anywhere in the country for the entire day.’   
Marshall growled annoyed. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have a Meowth make the reservation. Oh sure, they can blend in perfectly fine, but typing with those paws… they might as well just go dancing on the keyboard and we would have probably had a better result. Anyway, back on topic: I promised you I would tell you more about your role in the greater scheme of things.’ Laura nodded, relieved that she would finally get some information. Marshall took a deep breath.  
‘For years now, we Pokémon have been waiting for P-Day.’  
‘P-Day?’  
Marshall nodded, slightly irked at the immediate interruption. ‘In World War 2, the liberation of Europe was started on a day they called D-Day. Our liberation will be called P-Day.’  
‘D-Day for Pokémon, got it. Continue.’  
‘Like I said, we have been waiting for P-Day for a long time. But we can’t do this alone. The troops that started the liberation on D-Day came from outside of Europe. We need somebody from outside too.’ Marshall made a head gesture to the blond girl sitting beside him. ‘That person in turn of course can’t do it by themselves either. Like you said yourself: you need help. I’ll do as much as I can, but I’m just one Pokémon. There are more Pokémon, all over the world, many of whom are older than I am. These older Pokémon have been working on P-Day for a much longer time than I have. Today, we’re gonna visit a Pokémon that was involved in the first P-Day.’  
‘Hang on, the first? So you have tried to regain your place in the world before?’ Marshall nodded, with a sad look in his tiny black eyes. ‘I don’t know the exact details. Most Pokémon involved are either disappeared, in hiding or dead. Those who can still be found rather don’t talk about it. The only thing I know for sure is that there was a conflict among those involved, which eventually caused the plan to fail.’  
Laura didn’t fully hear the last part of Marshalls story. There was one word that took up all of her attention.  
‘You can die?’ Marshall tilted his head to look at her. ‘Of course we can die. Most humans aren’t immortal either, now are they?’  
‘What do you mean, “most” … you know what, never mind. I don’t even want to know. How is it possible that you can die?’  
‘Well, some Pokémon, like myself, don’t have a strong skin or exoskeleton or armor to protect us. Which means that most modern-day weaponry can easily kill us. And we can die of old age. How long we live depends on the Pokémon really. A Swellow for example will live longer than a Beautifly, while a Sudowoodo will outlast both of them. Legendary Pokémon are immortal as far as we know, but nobody has seen them in ages. And we can of course be killed by other Pokémon.’  
A look of horror crept on Laura’s face. ‘Well what did you expect,’ Marshall answered to the question she was too afraid to ask. ‘When a Tortunator lights you on fire, you don’t just walk it off. A Hariyama can easily crush every bone in your body, and the claws on a Sandslash aren’t for show. And what do you think happens to you when a Steelix…’  
‘Alright, alright, I get it, Pokémon are dangerous.’ She looked suspiciously at the small, innocent looking creature that was sitting opposite of her, still balancing the black cap on his head. ‘Can you…?’  
Marshall smiled kindly at her. ‘Are you sure you want an answer to that question?’ Laura took a moment to think about it. ‘Nope. I do not. So, we’re going to a Pokémon involved in the first P-Day. And that Pokémon is just casually living somewhere in our country?’  
Marshall snickered. ‘Of course not. Like I said: most Pokémon involved in that P-Day are in hiding. Many others have tried to find a place in the human world. There are places in the wild where you can find Pancham among the panda bears, and the Russian woods house many Stantler living side by side with the reindeer and caribous. Many bird-Pokémon have just hidden themselves among the existing bird species, where they fit in perfectly. The Pokémon we’re going to visit now has been hidden for years now inside a zoo.’  
‘Does that mean we’re heading for… That can’t be, I’ve been in that zoo a million times. If there was a Pokémon hiding out in there, I would have noticed it a long time ago!’  
Marshall smiled. ‘We can be very inconspicuous if we want. For the past year, you haven’t noticed that you were followed by multiple Pokémon either.’


	6. Chapter 6

The zoo was crowded. That wasn’t strange, considering how the schoolyear was over and the summer break had begun. Under normal circumstances, Laura would stop and look at the children who would playfully yell at the animals, or at the baboons that ran around their little arena, or at the massive elephants that seemed to be completely indifferent to the droves of people looking at them. Today however, there was no time for that. Casually, to not draw attention to herself, but hastily she walked in the direction that Marshall whispered from her backpack. Every now and then she felt a light kick in her back if she went the wrong way.  
‘You’re not as pleasant company as I had hoped,’ she mumbled.  
‘And you’re not as fast as I had hoped,’ was the answer from her bag. ‘Now that we’re done with the courtesies, can we focus on the mission at hand?’ Laura said something inaudible, but kept on following the directions.   
‘Alright, now go inside that building right in front of you.’ Laura looked at the name above the door. “Reptile enclosure”.   
‘What are we looking for here?’ she asked quietly.  
‘We’re looking for one of the Pokémon involved in the first P-Day. I thought we went over all this?’ Laura couldn’t see her traveling companion, but she imagined he was sitting in her backpack with a triumphant smile. She gave her bag a strong tug, lifting it up a bit and shaking everything inside it. Some mumbled growls could be heard from the inside of the bag.  
‘Sorry, speedbump,’ Laura whispered, trying to hide her own triumphant smile. Some people had looked at her, trying to find the source of the strange growls, but their attention was quickly drawn back to the zoo animals.  
The inside of the building was dark and damp, the air hot and clammy. It just now dawned on Laura that the entire building was filled with reptiles. She didn’t like reptiles.  
‘Go right and go up the first staircase you see,’ Marshall whispered. Laura followed the instructions without protest. She was never all that comfortable in the dark. At the top of the stairs she found herself on a balcony with a view of the Komodo Dragons. Laura hoped fiercely that the Pokémon they were visiting looked nothing like the frightful creatures below her.   
‘Now what?’ she asked softly. It felt as if the eyes of the visitors looked right through her, directly inside her bag.  
‘Go through the door at the end of the walkway.’  
‘It says: “authorized personnel only”.’  
‘We’re authorized,’ Marshall said bluntly. ‘Just walk to the door and open it like it’s all completely normal. It’s not locked.’ Nervously Laura walked towards the door. Trespassing and breaking the rules, that wasn’t her style. Whenever she doubted if something was allowed, she always double checked or simply didn’t do it. Something like this didn’t suit her at all. What would her friends think if they’d hear this? Or her boyfriend? Or her parents? She would immediately lose very shred of credibility she had.   
Carefully she pushed the door handle down. The door was unlocked, as Marshall had promised. A few of the zoo visitors did stop to see what she was doing, but when she didn’t respond to them, they looked back at the Komodo Dragons again. Behind the door was a stairwell down. Since she had nowhere else to go, Laura went down the stairs. One floor lower, she reached the Giant Tortoise enclosure. Through the glass she could see the visitors on the other side of the pens.   
‘Do you see that red button at the end of the hallway?’ Marshall asked. ‘Press it. It closes down the turtle area for visitors.’ Laura could feel herself becoming less nervous throughout it all. She was getting more used to doing illegal stuff. For a moment she wondered whether that was a good thing or not.  
As soon as she pressed the button, a recorded message played over the speakers asking the visitors to immediately leave the enclosure. After everybody had left, an automated lock closed down the area, preventing anybody from coming in.  
With some help from Laura, Marshall exited the bag. ‘Gotta love modern technology,’ he said excited. After a short inspection if they truly were all alone, Marshall walked to the glass between them and the tortoises. Laura stood beside him.  
‘Now what?’ she asked. Marshall smiled.  
‘Now your training begins. Look around you. Is there anything out of the ordinary? Anything that doesn’t fit? Anything that’s different than it’s supposed to be? Focus, register every detail, and tell me what’s wrong with this picture.’  
Laura looked around, first through the hallway that she stood in. It was a normal room, black floor with grey walls. Nothing strange about it. There were two wall-mounted phones, a control panel, the red button, the door back to the staircase and another door on the other end of the hallway. She turned around, back to the turtle enclosure. Everything in there seemed normal too. Most turtles were calmly chewing their food. Others were sleeping in the sand, or drinking from a puddle. It’s like they hadn’t even noticed the humans leave all at the same time. The ground, the puddle, the plants and rocks, it all seemed so completely normal. At least… Laura grinned. That sly Marshall!  
The Mudkip looked at her. ‘What’s so funny?’ With an ominous smile she looked into the pen once again. Then, without turning her head, she said to Marshall: ‘I thought we would have to go to another location, but this is where we have to be. We don’t have to go anywhere else, this time something has to come to us. And I also know what.’ She pointed at one of the turtles that was covered away in a corner. He was slightly bigger than the other turtles, and even though his skin had a similar sandy color as the other turtles, there was a slight tint of blue there that set him apart from the rest. His shield was also more flattened and had a lighter brown color.  
Marshall smiled at her. ‘You learn fast. I have to admit that I wasn’t sure if you would figure it out, but you don’t disappoint.’ He turned around and tapped the glass wall with his tail. A few of the turtles turned around slowly to look at them, but the only one that actually started moving was the turtle that Laura had pointed out.  
‘It’s alright,’ Marshall yelled, loud enough to be audible through the glass. ‘We’re alone.’ The giant tortoise stretched itself out now, making it even larger than the other animals. A lot faster than Laura had expected, the animal walked on all four legs towards the glass. While it was walking, two parts of its shield moved back and from the newly formed holes, two cannon barrels emerged. Marshall opened the hatch that the caretakers use to feed the animals to make it easier to talk.  
‘Marshall, good to see you again,’ the Blastoise said, as it raised itself on its hind legs. Marshall laughed. ‘It’s good to see you too old friend!’ Somewhat uneasy, Laura looked at the two Pokémon, one not even as big as her backpack, the other large enough to hit her over her head.  
‘So this is the human that you talked about,’ Blastoise said as he examined Laura. Marshall nodded, and gestured to Laura that she should come closer.  
‘Don’t worry human, you have nothing to fear,’ Blastoise said. His voice was deep and darker, even deeper than Marshall’s, and demanded respect and awe. ‘I have never hurt a human, and I never will, as long as they don’t do anything to deserve it.’ Laura thought about that remark for a moment, which apparently was meant to comfort her. ‘Marshall didn’t bring you here without a reason,’ the gigantic turtle continued. ‘I’m sure he told you about the first P-Day and what part I played in it.’  
‘Actually,’ Marshall said, hastily, ‘I couldn’t tell her about that, since you have never told me about it.’ Blastoise stared at the much smaller Pokémon with a troubled look on his face, as if he was thinking really hard. ‘I didn’t? Hm, maybe I didn’t. When you’ve lived as long as I have, you start to forget who you told what to and who you didn’t tell anything.’  
‘Really?’ Laura was immediately interested. ‘How old can a Blastoise get?’ The turtle let out a loud, roaring laugh. ‘Let’s just say that I’m older than most normal turtles.’ He looked at Marshall and Laura again, clearly thinking again. ‘I’m not going to tell you much about that first P-Day. It was a sad day, and a disappointing occurrence. For now, you’ll have to settle for some general advice: make sure you can trust the Pokémon around you. Now, as you know, there is another reason why Marshall brought you here.’  
Laura nodded. ‘So he can train me for the real P-Day.’  
Blastoise laughed so hard that some of the turtles drew their heads back into their shields. Laura indignantly looked at him. ‘What’s so funny about that?’ she asked angrily.  
‘Listen here human, when Marshall showed himself to you, he exposed a very old secret, a secret that can endanger many Pokémon and humans alike. He can have one of two reasons for that. The first is that things have gone so horribly wrong in Pokémon society that he needs your help immediately, right now. If that were the case, you could probably notice it in his behavior. He would be hasty, give you very little details, and only tell you what you need to know in that exact moment.’ Laura raised her eyebrows at the Mudkip, who acted as if he didn’t notice anything familiar in that description. Blastoise continued, not paying attention to any of the nonverbal interaction of his visitors.  
‘The second possible reason is that you’re already prepared enough for P-Day. Either way: it’s impossible to train somebody for it. Or at least, impossible to train a human. The only preparing you can do is making sure you know a lot about Pokémon. Whether or not you do is of no interest to me. But whatever the case: Marshall didn’t bring you here to train you.’  
‘Then why did he?’ Laura asked, now unsure of everything. Blastoise bent down towards the hatch and pushed one of his cannon barrels through the opening. Marshall jumped away from the hatch and Laura, who suddenly saw a cannon aimed at her, dropped to the ground in fear. For a second there was complete silence, then there was a sound of a metal object falling, followed by another loud laugh from Blastoise.   
‘Stand up human,’ he grinned. Laura cautiously climbed up again and looked at the hatch. On the small table laid a sphere the size of a Ping-Pong ball. The girl picked it up and stared at the giant turtle in complete disbelief. ‘You’re giving me a Poké Ball? I thought I was supposed to destroy these things.’  
Blastoise shook his massive head. ‘Only those that aren’t currently occupied.’ Laura looked at the little ball in her hand again. ‘You mean…’ The Blastoise had already returned to his corner, the cannons had disappeared in his shield again. Marshall closed the hatch and crawled back into the bag. ‘If I were you, I’d hide that for a few more moments,’ he said. ‘We don’t want you losing it.’

_Fire. The second of the classical elements. Fire and water are connected to each other in a never-ending cycle. Water extinguishes fire, fire evaporates water, but the vapor will return to water, and fire can be reignited. Fire cauterizes wounds, but can also inflict much more severe wounds. Fire destroys houses, forests, entire cities. And it brings warmth, light. For centuries, fire has symbolized power and destruction, as well as homeliness. “A fire burning inside somebody” symbolizes passion, emotion, life. Love is said to burn bright like a flame. Fire can be a force of destruction, much more so than water, but without fire, there can be no life._


	7. Chapter 7

Farley shivered, but this time it wasn’t because of the cold mountain air. For a few days now, Farley had had the feeling that something wasn’t right on the mountainside. Every time he came home from his field, he involuntarily started trembling. At first, he thought it was the cold, but he had eliminated that option by now. Farley had lived on this mountain for years now, the cold shouldn’t bother him anymore.   
Farley knew that there was no way he would find a solution by himself. Moving wasn’t an option: he had no other place to go and he had put too much effort into his house and his field to just abandon all that. Reluctantly he started climbing the mountain. The monastery had brought him peace all those years ago. If there was one place where he could leave his fears behind, it would be there.   
The moment Farley entered the courtyard of the monastery, the meditating monks jumped up and ran inside. Some even ignored their vow of silence in the process. Baffled, Farley looked around. The courtyard had changed from a place of serenity into a haven of chaos within seconds. His senses couldn’t keep up with reality, too much was happening at the same time. Movement, noises, sounds, screams, things falling over, people running, metal clanging, was that blood? That red substance on the columns, was that blood? What had happened here? Farley tried to regain the focus of his senses, but it was too much, way too much. The sounds, the sights, the smell…. The smell of death. Death. Fear and death ruled this courtyard. This was no longer a monastery; this was a morgue.  
The abbot stormed out of the building, followed by eight monks armed with a variety of weapons. And they were all heading for Farley. In the eyes of the abbot, Farley could see only pure, blind hatred and burning rage.  
‘Get out! Leave!’ he shouted. Farley had never seen the old man this energetic and angry. ‘You are no longer welcome here. You have dishonored your oath and have thrown away everything we stand for! You will never find peace in this life, and you will always be chased by the memories of what you have done!’  
The armed monks moved away from behind the abbot and started running towards Farley, their weapons ready to strike. Frightened by the abbot and the uncharacteristic anger of the monks, Farley started running out of the monastery, onto the mountain trail, back to his cabin.   
Because of his fear, confusion and haste, Farley got careless. More than once did he trip, fall on the hard ground, roll down a few meters, only to get back up on his feet with the utmost effort and continue running. When he got close to his cabin, he recognized a strange scent, a scent he hadn’t smelled in a really long time. It became harder and harder to breathe the air, and every gulp of oxygen he got in was accompanied by a nasty flavor. One more turn and he would be sure…  
Even though Farley already knew what he would see, it still came as a shock to see the smoke rising up to the sky. He kept running, faster and faster, towards the ominous dark pillar in front of him. He arrived just in time to see the last patch of his field fall victim to the flames. He knew that there was no use in intervening. There was nothing to intervene with, really. Even if he could prevent the fire from completely consuming all the crops, they still wouldn’t be edible because of all the smoke and ash.   
Defeated, wounded and sad, Farley collapsed on the ground next to the smoldering remnants of his field. His life’s work laid fuming besides him. He had no safety net left, and his only friends in the world had cursed him, cast him out and chased him away. He didn’t care anymore when the ash came down on his head and body, he wasn’t bothered anymore by the freezing wind, and when the snow started falling, he ignored that too.


	8. Chapter 8

Laura looked at the little ball in the palm of her hand. It only had one button, right in the middle, where the two halves met. Marshall sat beside her on the couch and studied her in curious anticipation.  
‘So…’ Laura hesitated. ‘How do I open it?’ Marshall tilted his little head. ‘Haven’t they taught you that in the video games? Or on TV?’ Laura shook her head. Marshall sighed.  
‘Tap the button in the middle to enlarge it.’ Laura carefully did what he said. The ball immediately grew to the size of a tennis ball.  
‘Now what?’  
‘Now you carefully push the upper half upwards. Make sure you aim it right, otherwise the Pokémon might get stuck in objects that are in the way.’ Laura aimed at the middle of the room, just above the ground, so that the Pokémon would have plenty of space. Exactly like Marshall told her, she pushed the upper half of the Poké Ball up and braced herself.  
She didn’t expect the ball to have a recoil. As soon as the little device opened up, a large force pushed back against her. Because she had her arm stretched out, she could apply enough force to not drop the ball. From the opening came a bright white flash that temporarily blinded her. When the spots stopped dancing in front of her eyes, she looked at the middle of the room.  
Among her stuff sat a small, almost round bird. The little creature had feathers in three shades of brown, a white color around its eyes and a long beak with black tip at the end. A single white feather provided some color variation in the small tail, and atop the small head stood one pluck of hair in a crescent shape. The Pokémon stretched out, flapped its wings and then looked around itself. First alongside the walls, at the unfamiliar machines, past the clothes and papers spread around the floor, at the blonde girl on the couch. Then it saw Marshall.  
Furiously fluttering the Starly rushed towards the Mudkip. With its long beak it pecked away at the blue Pokémon. Laura dove off of the couch, away from the angry bird-Pokémon.  
‘Marshall, you nasty, lying…’ Laura was surprised at the foul language and aggressive behavior coming from the Starly, that looked so innocent. ‘This was _not_ what we agreed upon!’ it yelled in between attacks. ‘You said I would have to stay inside that prison for only a week, maximum. This was more than a year!!!’ Marshall jumped off the couch and crawled under one of the closets, so the Starly couldn’t hit him anymore.  
‘You’re right!’ he yelled. ‘You’re absolutely right. It took a little longer than I expected, but that doesn’t change our deal! I got you out of the ball, now it’s your turn!’ The Starly mumbled and grunted some things that made Laura blush a little, but then it flew towards the window, which it hit. Hard. Laura let out a startled screech and immediately rushed to open the window. The Starly looked at her with what Laura assumed was an angry look and then flew away. Marshall carefully crawled out from underneath the closet.  
‘What did you do?’ Laura asked curiously. ‘He was really angry with you.’  
‘She,’ Marshall corrected. Laura looked at him, pleasantly surprised. ‘I had told her that she would only have to stay in that Poké Ball for one week and that you would let her out after that time. It ended up taking a little bit longer because I wasn’t sure you were ready for it. In the meantime, I couldn’t really give her an update, since we Pokémon can’t open Poké Balls. Only humans can. One of the nifty little “improvements” humans made to them. There are exceptions of course, but generally speaking, we’re unable to open them. Days turned into weeks, weeks turned into months, and in the end she was in that Poké Ball for well over a year.’  
‘What’s it like? To be in such a ball?’  
‘You cannot possibly imagine it. There is nothing in the human world that is even close to it. Try to think of…’ Marshall hesitated for a moment. ‘I can’t even find the right words to describe it. This is one of those things that you can only understand if you have lived through it yourself.’ Laura nodded compassionately, and then turned her sight to the Poké Ball that was lying on the floor.  
‘So, are we gonna break that thing now?’  
Marshall shook his head. ‘Not yet. If we do that now, there’s a change that nice Starly will be called back into it in mid-air. She doesn’t take too kindly to me right now, but if that would happen, I would have to run for my life, since there’s no way I’ll be safe around her then.’ Laura chuckled. Part of her felt like Marshall deserved it.  
‘So what are we gonna do?’  
‘We’re gonna find some tools. Hammers, drills, all of it. These things aren’t made to break easily.’


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The Starly didn’t stay out for long. By the time Laura and Marshall had moved all the needed tools upstairs, the bird flew back through the window. In one of her claws she held a new Poké Ball. She dropped it above Laura, who managed to catch it albeit slightly clumsily. The Starly settled down on the couch, with one eye watchfully aimed at Marshall. Laura sent Marshall a questioning look, who then passed it on to the Starly.  
‘Oh come on!’ the Starly yelled annoyed. ‘Stop it with the looks and the unspoken questions. If there’s something, just say it!’  
‘Was everything alright?’ Marshall asked. ‘Did you find it where we left it?’  
‘Yes I found it where we left it!’ Laura could already tell that the Starly had little patience, but she seemed to have even less patience for the Mudkip. She could hardly blame her though: a year in prison was no easy feat.   
Marshall smiled contently. ‘Great. Well Laura, you know what to do.’ Laura nodded. Just like the first time, she first studied the ball. It didn’t look any different than the one the Starly had emerged from. Like the previous one, this Poké Ball only had one button. She pressed it, and as she expected the ball grew in her hand. Slightly more certain of herself than last time, and with a firmer grip, she aimed the ball at a secure spot in the room, curious what would emerge this time. She pushed the upper half open, and was once again blinded by the white flash of light. This time however, she expected the recoil. Her sight recovered faster too. As soon as she could see clearly again, her heart started to melt.  
In the middle of her room stood a small bear, slightly larger than Marshall. The little bear had light brown fur, almost orange, and tiny, black beady eyes. He stretched his little legs, shook his head a few times, blinked a time or two, and then aimed his attention to Laura and Marshall.  
‘You and I need to have a lengthy conversation about the meaning of the phrase “don’t worry, it won’t be long”,’ he said to Marshall. The Starly flew towards him and nestled down on the floor next to him. Laura looked at the two Pokémon in front of her.  
‘Teddiursa and Starly,’ she said, thinking. ‘Can I name you? Please? Oh, your name would be Ted,’ she said, pointing enthusiastically at the Teddiursa. The little bear frowned, but didn’t say anything. ‘And you,’ she said, pointing at the Starly, ‘you I’ll call… Swarley!’  
‘Swarley!?’ the bird cried out indignantly.  
‘Oh oh,’ Marshall mumbled.  
‘I will have you know that my name is Skye,’ the Starly continued, clearly insulted. ‘I come from a long line of noble birds!’  
‘Here we go again,’ the Teddiursa said, rolling his eyes. He and Marshall took a few steps back to give Skye the space for her story. Laura now stood in front of the small but fierce Pokémon, all by herself, slightly uncomfortable.   
‘My father and brothers are important members of the Air Brigade, just like my grandfather before them. My great-grandfather led the air force during the previous P-Day, where he gave his life for the wellbeing of the entire Pokémon world. The men in my family have always been proud leaders, ever since my great-great-great-great-grandfather won the War of the Skies!’  
‘Wasn’t that one more generation back?’ Marshall whispered. The Teddiursa shrugged. ‘The story changes every time she tells it.’  
‘My mother,’ Skye continued, determined to let nothing stop her, ‘my mother carries the command over the scouts from the Magenta Polis. Her mother was the pride of the entire Valley Region, and her mother was the best healer during P-Day. We have never done anything that could be held against us, we have always been loyal, and we shall never waver! We will never suffer shame, we will never…’  
‘Alright, alright,’ the Teddiursa stopped her. ‘That’s enough for one day, Princess Skye.’ He added a little extra sarcasm for those last two words. Skye walked away, partially mad, partially embarrassed, while still muttering something about respect, family and pride. The Teddiursa walked towards Laura and extended his little paw.  
‘Nice to meet you,’ he said with a warm smile. ‘My name is Terry. I could bore you with my family history, but I don’t think there’s anybody here waiting for that.’ Laura grabbed the paw and shook it politely. ‘The pleasure is all mine Terry; my name is Laura.’ She already like the teddy bear a lot more than the other two. He was kinder than Marshall and less arrogant than Skye.  
‘I do hope that Marshall hasn’t filled your head with too many stories of being the “chosen one” and all that,’ Terry said. ‘Talking about P-Day and the role of a human doesn’t always have the best effect on people.’ Laura shrugged. ‘I mean, he said that I would basically be a superhero sidekick, so…’  
‘Oh Marshall, a superhero sidekick?’ Terry sighed. He looked angrily at Marshall. ‘You know how impressionable people are! You can’t tell them that they’re special, then they start doing dumb things. No offense,’ he added, turning briefly to Laura. Laura made a gesture that said ‘none taken’. Terry turned back to Marshall. ‘Have you learned nothing from last time?’  
‘Hey, that didn’t go that bad!’ Marshall said defensively. ‘That boy grew up to be president of his country!’  
Skye snuffed and jumped back into the conversation. ‘Yes, and during his time as president, he plunged the country into economic crisis, alienated his allies, and did so many dumb things that comedians will be able to joke about him for decades to come. Face it Marshall: he was a bad president.’  
In her head, Laura went over the list of possible candidates the Pokémon could be talking about. If they meant the same person she was thinking of, that would explain a lot of things. Marshall clearly didn’t want to talk about it though, since he immediately changed the subject.  
‘Alright ladies and gentleman, we need to get back to business. Skye, go outside and check our surroundings. We can’t afford any unexpected visitors. I will double check the agenda of her family to make sure we have all the time we need. Terry, you stay here. Keep an eye on her.’ He tried to whisper that last sentence, but Laura could hear it word for word. Marshall and Skye left the room, one through the door, the other through the window, leaving Laura alone with Terry. Suddenly exhausted, she plumped down on the couch. Terry climbed up next to her, and compassionately put his paw on her arm.  
‘Scary, isn’t it?’ Laura looked at him, not understanding what he was aiming at.  
‘What is?’  
‘You know, all of this. Marshall walking in, creatures that you thought were fictional suddenly show up right in front of you, having to do things you never saw yourself doing. I can imagine that’s quite a lot to take in.’ Although his words were kind of harsh, Terry spoke them in a soft tone. He clearly meant well. Laura smiled, but it wasn’t a very sincere smile.  
‘A part of me still hopes that this is just a bad dream, that I’ll just wake up in bed and none of this has ever happened.’ Terry nodded in understanding.   
‘Don’t worry too much about Marshall and Skye. They may not seem all that nice, but they mean well. They just… take some getting used to.’  
‘How long have you known them.’  
‘I don’t know. A lifetime. We don’t keep track of years as closely as you humans do. I’ve known them long enough to hate them and love them at the same time. There are times when I could kill them, but I would gladly lay down my life for them. They’re the closest thing I have to a family.’ Laura nodded. She was all too familiar with the feeling.  
‘Anyway, you have nothing to be afraid of,’ Terry continued. ‘We might not be the biggest or the strongest, or the most impressive Pokémon out there, but we will protect you. We dragged you into all this, and we will make sure you get out of it in one piece.’ Laura looked at him gratefully. She needed those words a lot more than she thought. She decided that Terry was indeed her favorite.  
‘Oh, and by the way,’ Terry added, ‘that stuff about it all being a dream? Don’t say that to Marshall. He’ll bite you to prove that it’s not.’

_Ground. One of the most important parts of planet Earth. The ground provides stability, it gives people a place to build houses, factories and cities on. It gives support, it makes people feel secure and safe. And yet the ground too can be destructive. Earthquakes can destroy entire towns in seconds, cracks in the earth’s surface swallow houses whole. Lava spews up through holes in the ground and sandstorms will burry people alive. The earth provides people with the option to grow their own food, but if the earth isn’t fertile it will lead to starvation._

_Rocks. The decorate the earth’s surface. Little pebbles create a nice shoreline along a lake. Rocks on the river bottom allow people to walk through them. People use rocks to build their houses and other structures. The utilize the sturdiness of rocks to divert the flow of rivers and seas at their own will. Large boulders provide safety during storms, or to strengthen buildings. But those same rocks, at the right speed, can wipe an entire house away. They can tear open a ship, or bury land-vehicles under a rock slide. Smaller rocks, thrown in just the right way, can instantly kill a man. The rock is the oldest weapon known to the human race._


	10. Chapter 10

Farley shook his shoulders. He wasn’t used to this type of clothing, but it was the only way to move through Delhi without standing out too much. His long stay in the solitary of the Himalayas had caused him to feel uneasy between all these people. He always felt like they were looking at him, as if their eyes were following him everywhere he went. He tried his best to stay hidden, but every now and then he still needed to go into the open road or a market square.  
The trip to Delhi wasn’t easy. After his field had burned down, the monks started closing in quickly. They clearly didn’t just want him gone from the monastery, but from the mountain range altogether. Building up a new field by himself would take too much time: he would starve to death before he could reap his first harvest. Settling down in a nearby village wasn’t an option either. He had learned from the Sherpas that the people in those villages generally didn’t care much for outsiders. His only chance of survival was to go to one of the larger cities. There he would have to gather some food and then try to build a new life for himself. A life that was his, where he wasn’t dependent on anybody. While traveling from the mountains to Delhi, he had taken a difficult route. To avoid capture by the monks, he had traveled through the forests, through roads that were hard to walk, and over paths that hadn’t been used in years. He had avoided the villages, towns and open roads as much as possible. He had stolen a horse from a farm to speed up his travel a bit, and when he got closer to Delhi, he had hidden himself in the freight car of a train that was headed for the city. During his travel, he had lived purely on what nature could offer him.  
The anger of the otherwise peaceful monks had changed the way Farley saw the world. He now realized that every man was capable of the hatred and horrible acts that had defined so much of his life already. He had thought, hoped, that the people that took his mother away were exceptions, that not everybody was like this. But now, the monks had taken that hope away. In its place had come a fear for everybody that Farley did not know.  
The differences between the Himalayas and Delhi couldn’t have been bigger. In the mountains, Farley hardly ever saw anybody else. In the big city, he was never alone. All those people together, the massive crowds, the heat, the constant touches and the overwhelming amount of sounds made Farley feel incredibly uncomfortable. No, he thought, not uncomfortable. Afraid. And he felt something else, something he couldn’t quite identify. The hood on his head and the cloth in front of his face managed to hide it quite well, but every muscle in his body was tightened, ready to move at the first sight of danger. His eyes moved restlessly around, registering every inch of every street out of fear for a hostile look. The long coat, high boots and gloves made him feel ridiculously warm, but it seemed to be the only way to easily disappear in the crowd.  
A bus, so full that people were clinging to the sides and the roof, almost ran over Farley. He heard people shouting at him in a language which he did not understand. Other people looked at him in disdain, whispered to each other, pointed at him. The unfamiliar emotion came to the surface again. It wasn’t fear, it was something much stronger. Farley did not know what to do with it.  
He had only felt this emotion twice before. The first time was when he watched his mother being taken away by those evil men. The second time was when the monks chased him after his field burned down. Since he had arrived in Delhi, the unfamiliar emotion had been almost constantly present. It wasn’t a pleasant emotion, but it gave Farley the strength to keep moving. The emotion undid some of the fear and allowed him to ignore the looks of the people around him.  
The street ended in a market square. Farley could hear the shouts of the salesmen from far away. Carefully he walked into the square, making sure he would never stand by himself out in the open. The dense crowds had a nice aspect, he thought. It allowed him to walk away without standing out from the rest, and he could easily disappear in the masses. It gave him a break from the feeling that everybody was staring at him.  
The stalls on the square were filled with more food than Farley had ever seen in his lifetime. He could not understand how there could be so much food on this one square, while a sizable part of this city was dying of starvation. Next to him, a woman paid a gold-colored coin for a bag of figs. Farley suddenly realized that he had no money to buy food with. The unfairness of the world became more apparent to him than ever before. He had never done anything wrong in his entire life, and yet he was driven out of his home, had lost everybody he cared about, and was now destined to die from hunger, just because he had no gold.  
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a small boy take some fruit from one of the stalls. Before he could wonder how that boy was going to pay for the fruit, he saw the child run away and disappear among the hundreds of people in the streets. With newfound determination, Farley looked at the food in the stall in front of him. He would not die in the horrific city.


	11. Chapter 11

Skye and Marshall didn’t stay out for long. Much to Laura’s disappointment, since she enjoyed talking to Terry. It was nice to have a normal, pleasant conversation with somebody, even if that somebody was a Pokémon.  
‘All clear,’ Skye reported. ‘Neighbors aren’t home, and there’s hardly anybody outside.’ Marshall nodded satisfied. ‘We have three hours before anybody gets home. That should be more than enough time. Laura, are you ready?’ Laura nodded, took the two Poké Balls from her pocket and placed them on the floor. As she did that, the three Pokémon anxiously took a few steps back. Even Marshall was clearly uncomfortable in the presence of the Poké Balls. Terry looked at Skye. ‘Who’s up first?’ The Starly hesitated and clearly didn’t want to give the selfish answer. Terry sighed. ‘You know what? Why don’t you go first?’ he said indulgently. Skye sighed with relief, flew to the Poké Balls and grabbed one in her small claw.  
‘How do you know that one is yours?’ Laura asked.  
‘Trust me, when you’ve been stuck in that thing for a year, you’ll recognize it instinctively.’ Skye placed the little ball next to the tools on the floor.  
‘Alright Laura,’ Marshall said. ‘Now comes the hard part. In a moment, I want you to open the ball, just like when you let Skye out. First make it large again.’ Laura pressed the button, and the Poké Ball grew to the by now familiar size of a tennis ball. Skye shivered.  
‘Very good,’ Marshall smiled. ‘Now, push the upper half open. Wait, wait!’ he yelled quickly when Laura put her thumb at the middle already. ‘Make sure you don’t aim it at Skye. We’re not entirely sure how it works, but when you aim it at Skye, she’ll be sucked back into it. Oh, and it’s linked to your thoughts. So whatever you do, don’t think about locking Skye up.’  
Laura looked angrily at Marshall. ‘Now that’s the only thing I can think about!’   
Terry laughed. ‘Come on Marshall, you know how that works. You saw Ghostbusters, didn’t you?’  
Skye looked at Marshall with narrowed eyes. ‘If I get locked up again because of you, I swear to you there will be no place on Earth where you can hide from me!’  
‘Relax, calm down,’ Marshall said, although there was a hint of fear in his voice. ‘It works both ways. If Laura thinks really hard about releasing you, then that’ll help, but you can also do something. Just resist the Poké Ball, with all your strength. You should be able to stay out that way. Laura, after you open the ball, place it on the ground, grab a hammer and hit the hinge that connects the two halves. If it can’t close anymore, it can’t lock up a Pokémon either. Alright, everybody ready?’ Laura nodded, Skye braced herself, and Terry shuffled to the edge of the couch to see it better. Laura aimed the ball away from Skye and pushed it open.  
Even though she tried her hardest, she couldn’t help it. Her thoughts started wandering, she asked herself what it must have been like for Skye to be in that ball. A red beam shot from the Poké Ball, turned around towards Skye, and before she could full well realize what was happening, Skye had disappeared and the ball was closed again.  
Her surprise made Laura deaf to her surroundings for a moment. She saw Marshall screaming something, and she saw Terry rolling on the couch with laughter. Then she looked at the Poké Ball in her hand. Without really thinking about it, she opened it again and closed her eyes for the white flash of light that she knew would come. As soon as she opened her eyes again, she saw Skye hammering her beak down on Marshall. Like last time, Marshall crawled under the closet, leaving Skye with no other option than to look furiously at him.  
‘You will pay for this!’ she screamed. Then she looked at Laura, who was blushing with embarrassment, and at Terry, who was trying really hard to hold in his laughter.  
‘I’m sorry Skye,’ Laura said. ‘I couldn’t help it. My mind started wandering because of what Marshall said, and I didn’t know how to stop it.’  
Terry swallowed a few times, took a deep breath, and said: ‘It’s really not her fault Skye. It was a stupid remark by Marshall, and she is all new to this.’ Skye mumbled something angry and withdrew herself behind the couch, outside of Laura’s view. Marshall quickly crawled out from underneath the closet and hid behind Laura.  
‘Let’s try this again,’ he said hastily. ‘Before she gets mad again.’ Laura did again what Marshall had instructed her to do, but this time she thought of Skye flying freely through the air. A mental image of freedom would probably help, she figured. Much to her own surprise, the Poké Ball opened without any additional effects. Joyfully Marshall jumped up and ran to the hammer they had brought. Laura carefully placed the opened ball on the ground and grabbed the hammer. She squatted down next to the ball, aimed and brought the hammer down right on the hinge. Nothing happened.  
‘Again!’ Skye yelled from behind the couch. Laura hit again, harder this time. Still nothing happened.  
‘Use all your strength!’ Marshall shouted. His voice was a mixture of anger and despair. Laura swung the hammer back and brought it back down with every bit of power she could muster. The swing was less careful than the other two, and she missed the hinge and hit one of the two halves instead. The material completely shattered underneath the hammer, and the tiny bits flew all over the room. A shout of joy sounded from behind the couch. Even though Skye couldn’t see it, she could clearly feel that her Poké Ball had broken. Marshall and Terry stared completely astonished at the remains of the Poké Ball.  
‘Well, I guess that’s one way to do it,’ Marshall mumbled. Terry immediately brought out his own Poké Ball. Laura went through the whole process again, this time a lot more confident. The ball opened on the first try, without Terry being sucked in again. Instead of aiming at the hinge, Laura aimed directly at one of the two halves, which immediately burst under the impact of the hammer. Terry showed clear signs of relief as well, although he wasn’t as exuberant as Skye. Laura looked at Marshall. ‘Don’t you have a Poké Ball that I need to break?’  
Marshall shook his little head. ‘I was born free. All three of us were actually.’   
‘So wait, how did you actually end up in those Poké Balls? I know Marshall made a promise about how long you had to stay in it but… Wait a minute, did you…?’  
‘Yes, Marshall was actually the one who captured us,’ Terry said. ‘Thanks again for that. You see, a Pokémon doesn’t necessarily have to be caught by a human. As long as he comes into contact with a Poké Ball, he can be caught. Marshall used his water tricks to throw a Poké Ball at us and we let him capture us because it was the best way to prepare you.’  
‘And what if I wouldn’t have been able to break the Poké Balls?’  
‘Then we would have gotten very angry at Marshall.’ Terry smiled an ominous smile.  
‘There’s something that’s bothering me,’ Laura said, before the Pokémon would get into another fight with one another. ‘You said that there are many Pokémon that I have to free right? But if the humans don’t know that you exist, how come there are so many still trapped in Poké Balls? Who is capturing you?’  
‘We have to go a long way back for that,’ Skye said. ‘Back when the Pokémon were still used as toys of the humans, many of us were trapped in Poké Balls. The children of the captured Pokémon were automatically tied to a Poké Ball, and their children too, and their children too. As a result, there are still far too many Pokémon tied to Poké Balls today. Many of them have never actually spent any time inside, since their “owners” have died long ago.’  
‘But then why do I still have to break the Poké Balls? If they aren’t actually trapped inside them, what is the harm?’  
‘Because a Pokémon tied to a Poké Ball can’t utilize its full potential,’ Marshall explained. ‘For example, those Pokémon can only learn four powers – or “moves” as you have dubbed them – at the same time. And the amount of powers they can learn is incredibly limited. I once saw a Primarina capable of breathing fire, something which one born in captivity could never do. And additionally, Pokémon born in captivity need the permission of their human for a lot of things. Evolutions can take longer, they learn slower, and they can’t go where they want at their own free will, even if their human has died decades ago. And there is of course the mental effect of a Poké Ball. A Pokémon will go insane when they stay too long inside a ball, but the knowledge that there is something out there that could rob them of their freedom at any given moment also doesn’t do much good to a Pokémon.’  
‘And all that was added later right?’ Laura asked. ‘From what Marshall explained, I understand that it wasn’t always that way.’  
A look of sadness came over Terry. ‘True, when the human attitude towards Pokémon changed and our balance broke, they made those adjustments to the Poké Balls, along with a few others. The red beam that recalled Skye just now went around a corner. That’s one of the new additions.’  
‘And the fact that Marshall could catch us without human intervention,’ Skye added. ‘The Poké Balls had become real weapons.’  
‘How did the humans even get this?’ Laura asked puzzled. ‘I assume that all this happened decades ago, maybe even centuries. Technology wasn’t that good in the past. It’s not even that good right now! How could the people of the past do this?’  
Marshall hesitated for a moment. ‘We don’t know. There are many schools of thought, and the greatest minds in Pokémon society have thought intensively about this. The best theory we have is that some Pokémon or human traveled back in time from the future and took the designs for the Poké Balls with him to the past. If the people of that time managed to get those designs, they could easily build the Poké Balls. But we don’t know any of this for certain.’  
Laura looked at the Pokémon in utter disbelief. ‘That’s ridiculous. Time travel? That’s only possible in films and TV shows.’ Marshall stared at the blonde girl for just a moment. Then he spewed a water jet right in her face.  
‘As far as you knew a week ago, this was also only possible in films and TV shows. And yet it just happened. Suddenly time travel doesn’t seem so farfetched now does it?’


	12. Chapter 12

Although she understood that the Poké Balls were prisons for the Pokémon, Laura couldn’t help but think that it might have been more practical for transportation uses. It would have certainly made her trip to the train station a lot more comfortable. Skye had flown ahead, since she could pass for an ordinary bird, but Marshall and Terry had no other option than stay together in Laura’s backpack. The two Pokémon weren’t big, but the bag was still too small for the both of them. Laura frequently felt an unintended kick against her back when Marshall and Terry were trying to get comfortable again.  
When they arrived at the station, Skye was already waiting for them at the top of a train tunnel. ‘Oh no!’ Laura yelled at her bag. A few passersby looked at her as if she was crazy. ‘I am not going in there! No way! Do you know how dangerous that is?’  
‘Laura, trust me,’ Marshall whispered. ‘It’s the only way. It is very important that you go in there.’  
‘And besides,’ Terry added, ‘the longer you wait, the longer we have to stay in here. I may be wrong, but I don’t think anybody involved is really enjoying this situation.’ Laura sighed, took a deep breath and walked towards the train tunnel. She looked around carefully to see if nobody was watching her – or if there was a train going in or out of the tunnel – and went in. As soon as they got out of sight, she unzipped her bag. Filled with relief, Marshall and Terry jumped out of the bag, Marshall holding a flashlight in his mouth which Laura took from him. Skye shortly followed them into the tunnel and took the lead alongside Marshall. Terry and Laura followed them a few steps behind.  
‘I am never staying with Marshall in such a crammed space ever again,’ Terry mumbled. Laura chuckled.   
‘Can you tell me where we’re going?’ she asked. ‘As always, Marshall hasn’t told me much.’  
‘You’ve only known him for two days, but you already figured him out,’ Terry remarked. ‘When the Pokémon went underground, we literally went underground. We sought out tunnels, caves, catacombs, caverns, you name it. It would surprise you how many underground hollows there are in the world, and how well-connected they are. We created cities for ourselves in which we could gather, and managed to create reasonable living circumstances. In some places we made entranceways to the surface world. These entranceways are hidden, of course. Most of them in train tunnels and sewers.’  
‘Well that’s just typical,’ Laura mumbled.  
‘Hey, be glad we didn’t take you to a sewer,’ Terry laughed. ‘I know it’s not the most pleasant way of going about, but these are the places we know for sure aren’t frequently visited by humans. Some others are hidden in natural areas, outside of the cities and towns. And there are some that go directly to important locations. The White House, Buckingham Palace, the Vatican.’  
‘Really?’  
‘I mean, I haven’t seen them myself. But I have heard plenty of stories.’  
Their conversation was cut short by the loud noise of fluttering wings and a screech from Marshall. Laura quickly aimed her flashlight to the source of the sound. Skye and Marshall were nowhere to be found, and it seemed like there was nobody else in the tunnel. Terry started growling and Laura braced herself to fight off the unknown enemy. Suddenly, as if there was nothing happening, Skye flew down and landed on Laura’s shoulder. The girl and Terry both looked at her in surprise.  
‘Where’s Marshall?’ Laura asked.  
‘Up here,’ a voice faintly said above them. Laura pointed the flashlight upwards. Marshall sat on one of the high metal beams, over ten meters above the ground. Terry looked at Skye with an accusatory look.  
‘What?’ she said. ‘I told him he’d have to pay for letting me in that Poké Ball.’ Laura and Terry looked up with amusement in their eyes.  
‘Let. Me. Down!’ Marshall yelled.   
‘Shall I go pick him up again?’ Skye asked. Terry thought for a moment and then smiled. ‘Nah, let him stay there for a moment.’  
‘I heard that Terry!’ Marshall yelled down.

The trip to the underground city was not an easy one. After they had gotten Marshall down, he disappeared into a grotto that you could really only find if you knew it was there. The grotto quickly faded into a long, narrow passage that clearly was not made by human hands. It was obviously not intended that humans passed through here. Because she couldn’t really aim the flashlight in the narrow passage, Laura constantly bumped into the stones and rocks. It seemed to take hours before Marshall yelled: ‘We’re here!’  
Laura lit the flashlight again and looked around her. She had expected a giant, impressive city, but instead she only saw a dark, massive rock wall. Skye flew up to the ceiling of the cave, while Marshall walked towards the bottom of the wall. Terry stood next to Laura.  
‘Watch this,’ he said. ‘This is gonna be interesting.’ Skye tapped the top of the wall with her beak. At the same time Marshall spewed a small trickle of water at the wall. For a few moments, nothing happened. Then the earth beneath her feet started vibrating. The sand and small rocks started moving and rolling and flowed towards the wall. Terry jumped up and grabbed hold of Laura’s arm and Marshall was lifted up by Skye, so that the small Pokémon weren’t taken away by the flow. At the wall, the sand and rocks started forming a heap, right at the point where Marshall had spewed the water. The heap was roughly the height of an average person. The rumbling stopped, Marshall and Terry jumped down again, and they all walked towards the heap. As they approached the wall, the heap opened itself and showed a tunnel-like opening. Marshall, Terry and Skye went in, and Laura followed them with a mixture of fear and excitement. Inside the tunnel, the rocks and sand reflected the light of her flashlight, which gave the tunnel a beautiful twinkling outlook. The Pokémon kept walking, as if this was everyday business for them. For a moment, Laura stopped to think how absurd all of this was. She was walking alongside three Pokémon through an underground tunnel that had appeared right in front of her eyes.  
‘Keep moving Laura!’ Marshall yelled. ‘You’re almost there.’ The tunnel went up a little and lead to an opening. As soon as they exited, Skye flew up high out of their sight. Laura dusted herself off a little and looked behind her. Past the exit of the tunnel she saw the rock wall that she had seen just moments ago from the other side. Along the base of the wall stood a long line of Pokémon, positioned at regular intervals from each other. The line stretched along the wall as far as she could see. Close to her stood three Donphan, a Claydol and two Camerupt. The Donphan moved their trunks and the tunnel closed up again. The only thing that remained was a small pile of sand.  
At the top of the wall sounded a loud screeching sound. Startled, Laura looked up to see where the sound was coming from. At the top of the wall she saw a series of notches, all accompanied by a piece of rock sticking out on which a Pokémon was sitting, like gargoyles on large cathedrals. Laura couldn’t see inside the notches, but she could clearly see that all the Pokémon on the rocks were flying Pokémon. And they all seemed to look at her and her traveling companions.  
The screeching she had heard earlier came from a Flygon, who was rapidly ascending alongside the wall, straight towards Laura. For a moment she feared the Flygon would hit her, but at the last moment the green Pokémon changed direction and landed next to her. Laura was surprised at the size of the Pokémon. The creature was at least three meters long and towered far above her.   
‘Ah Marshall,’ the Flygon said. Laura could hear from the voice that the Pokémon was female. ‘We were waiting for you. I will inform the Pack of your arrival.’ She looked at Skye. ‘Your father is worried Skye. He keeps asking when you will enlist in the Air Brigade.’ Skye sighed.  
‘I have other duties. When will he understand that!’ The Flygon nodded understanding. ‘I will pass it on.’ Then she turned to Laura. ‘It is a pleasure to meet you,’ she said with a smile, as far as that was possible. Before Laura could answer, the Flygon flapped her wings and spurt away. Laura looked after her and in doing so turned away from the rock wall for the first time.  
From the little hill where they were standing, Laura had a view of an enormous underground valley. At many points, the valley was surrounded by hills like the one she stood upon. Directly opposite from where the stood, there was a large open space that faded away into the darkness of the caves. The hills forced the city between them to be built in a rough round shape. A broad road crossed it through the middle, with several smaller roads departing from it. A large circular open area formed the center of the town. The city was formed by countless structures, differing in size from ordinary houses to enormous buildings. The largest one that Laura could see was something that looked like a combination between a skyscraper and a tower.   
‘It’s even more amazing than I imagined,’ she said in awe. Marshall nodded proudly.  
‘Laura, it’s an honor to welcome you in Feldspar City.’  
Skye flapped her wings and lifted off into the air. ‘Wonderful isn’t it? You know, my family had a large role in creating this city. We are one of the proud houses that…’  
‘We should probably be going,’ Terry interrupted her. ‘The Pack is waiting for us inside the city.’ Skye seemed somewhat insulted, but still nodded and started circling around the group.  
‘Don’t you want to sit on my shoulder as we go in the city?’ Laura asked. ‘It seems like quite a trip.’  
‘I have been inside that Poké Ball for a year,’ Skye answered. ‘Every chance I get to fly, I will take.’

_Flying. One of humanities biggest dreams. Despite all the technology of the past two thousand years – airplanes, helicopters, paragliders, jet fighters, drones, space stations, parachutes, rockets – it is still impossible for the people to actually fly like the birds. The ability to fly symbolizes freedom. The wide open air is seen as a realm of infinity and undiscovered possibilities. The chance to fly is a chance to break free of the familiar and go into a whole new world. The air is in that way the counterpart of the ground. In the air there is no sturdiness, no stability. In the air you are alone, with nothing to keep you from falling._


	13. Chapter 13

‘Careful!’ the boatswain yelled. ‘There’s live cargo in that crate!’ Captain Kirilov shook his head as he watched his crew struggle to load the crates into the ship. With melancholy he thought about how much his job had changed over the years.  
He used to be proud of his job. When he was accepted into the navy as a young man, he considered it the best day of his life. It was the first time he had seen his father truly proud. Life in the Soviet Union had few things to be celebrated, only the soldiers and politicians had lives that could be considered comfortable. Sadly for him, he joined the navy at an unfortunate time. The Soviet Union was collapsing, they had four presidents in five years’ time, and one by one the states seceded from the Union. Like many people his age, Kirilov didn’t really mind it. He could sympathize with the idea that people wanted to be independent and free: after all, that was the idea the Union was founded on. Like many of his peers, Kirilov dreamed of reforming the Soviet Union, giving the Russians a country they could be proud of once again. But before he even got the opportunity, everything around him changed.  
As part of the peace deals with the West, the Soviet Union agreed to dismiss one third of its military. In addition to that, the salary for soldiers was cut in half, and most of the privileges of the armed forces were withdrawn. Kirilov was one of the unfortunate men who had to leave the navy only two years after he enlisted. Because he had to make money somehow, he moved to a new town, where he could make a fresh start. Every day he went down to the docks of the small town to sail on any ship that would go out. He didn’t care whether it was as a sailor or a cabin boy or a cook’s assistant, as long as he could be on a ship. Slowly but surely, he earned enough money to buy his own boat, hire some men and offer the boat up for transport services. At first, he mostly shipped goods, deliveries from business or new supplies for the stores. But when the economy of the Soviet Union – which had changed its name to Russia again – got worse, the shipping business changed too. The deliveries diminished, the stores started closing down, and organized crime managed to get a hold of the small town. Their eye quickly turned to the ships of small business, like the one that Kirilov ran.  
Initially, Kirilov resisted. He was raised with strong principles and he had no mind of betraying them. But as his legitimate contracts stopped coming in, he had no other choice than accept whatever he could get. It started small: every now and then there was an additional package hidden among the fish, or one of the bags in the cargo hold was filled with dirty money. But as the criminals grew stronger, they got bolder too. More than once had Kirilov shipped live cargo. He knew better than checking the crates and containers that were brought aboard: not only would that mean the end of his business, but probably also the end of his life.  
Only one time had he tried to do something against the crime in the small town. He had written a letter to the city leadership and the police chief. They were people he knew, good, honorable people. But they were also scared people. People with families. They couldn’t be bribed, but they also didn’t dare to do something against the criminality. Kirilov couldn’t do much by himself: the years in the navy were far behind him now, and he was not exactly in great shape anymore. The Russian government hadn’t done much either, simply because this was one of the many cities that could do with some improvements. The city was too small and insignificant to really appear on the governments radar.   
The men who sailed on Kirillov’s ship were all handpicked by him. All were honest people, who just like Kirilov had had no other choice than to turn a blind eye just to stay alive.  
This time, the ship would sail over small rivers and streams past a few towns and villages, with as its final destination a city in rural Kazakhstan that Kirilov had never heard of.  
With a loud bang, the crate hit the deck of the ship. The sailors had moved a little bit too fast, putting the crate down harder than was intended. A high-pitched howl, almost like the whining of a dog, sounded from the crate. The sailors and the boatswain looked at the crate in surprise, not sure what to make of it. Kirilov let out a relieved sigh. That noise meant in the very least that there were no people inside the crate.  
‘Yuri!’ he yelled at one of the sailors. A large man in his mid-twenties came running to the captain. ‘Make sure that whatever is in that crate gets fed every six hours.’ The sailor nodded and prepared to run back to his other business, but Kirilov stopped him for one more moment. ‘And Yuri, be careful. We don’t know what kind of animal we are dealing with here.’ Yuri nodded again, saluted, and went back to the other sailors to help them with the rest of the cargo.  
Kirilov smiled. Although it had been almost thirty years since he spent that short period in the navy, the sailors still treated him like he was a high-ranking military officer. Kirilov quickly glanced over his papers and the boxes on the docks. There was no more live cargo and most of the other things weren’t particularly interesting. Nothing the crew couldn’t handle by themselves. Kirilov gave a few last instructions to the coxswain and withdrew to his cabin.

In the middle of the night, Kirilov woke up. Much to his regret, he had to admit that this was becoming a regular occurrence. Whether it was the age or the unethical aspect of his line of work, Kirilov didn’t know, but it had been a long time since he had a good night’s sleep. Quietly, so he wouldn’t wake the rest of the crew, he went to the cabinet in his desk and took out a bottle of whiskey. There was an ironic connection between his work and the amount of alcohol he drank. His employers usually gave him bottles of liquor as an additional “thank you” for his work. Drinking that liquor silenced his conscience for a few hours, which made him better at his job, which brought in more liquor. This bottle was still half full. Enough for one night.  
Another regular aspect of these nighttime drinking sessions was thinking of the future. Every time Kirilov set sail to deliver his cargo, he started wondering what he had to do. Every time he considered not going back. Just stay at whatever port they arrived at. Find a place in that town to run an honest business. The rare moments when he passed the Russian border, the idea became even more tempting. He didn’t have to worry about the crew, they would follow him to the ends of the earth and beyond. He also didn’t have to fear his employers: they might have contact in many places in Russia, but a massacre abroad would be too risky even for them.  
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, slurring. He looked at the bottle in surprise. It had gone empty a lot quicker than he thought. ‘When we get to Kazakhstan, we won’t go back. We’ll live there and we’ll start again. This time I’ll do it right.’ Determined and confidently he put the bottle down on his desk and started looking for a new one in the cabinet. His hands only found air.  
Softly cursing he stood up and walked to the deck. The crew had stashed their own alcohol away in a few places to liven up their night shifts. They probably wouldn’t mind their captain stealing a sip or two.   
Without any trouble he walked to the deck. Drunk or not, if you’ve been sailing for thirty years, you don’t struggle standing up straight on a ship anymore.  
On the deck, Yuri was dragging a box with food for the live cargo around. With a big grin he saluted Kirilov. The crew had also grown used to their captain being up at night. They never talked about it, but everybody knew what was going through his head. Kirilov saluted back and watched for a moment to see if Yuri would manage. The sailor carefully took one of the planks off of the crate and dropped a piece of raw meat through it. Scrounging noises came from the crate as the animal devoured the meat. Yuri quickly dropped another piece of meat through the hole. In doing so, his fingers reached into the crate just a little bit.  
Immediately the sailor pulled his hand back and looked at his fingers. The coxswain had noticed the sudden movement.  
‘Everything alright Yuri?’ he yelled from behind the rudder. Yuri made a dismissive gesture. ‘I was a bit careless. It bit my finger when it tried to grab the meat, but it’s nothing serious, just a small scratch.’ The coxswain inspected him for a moment, but then focused on the steering again. Yuri dropped the last bit of meat.  
Before the meat had even reached the hole in the crate, a maw shot out from the crate. Instinctively Yuri pulled his arm back, but he wasn’t fast enough. The creature’s teeth buried itself in the man’s forearm. The sailor’s screams of agony echoed over the entire ship.  
‘Yuri!’ Kirilov screamed. As fast as his drunk legs allowed him, the captain ran towards the sailor, who was trying his hardest to get the maw off his arm. The coxswain, whose mind was a little bit clearer, reached Yuri first, grabbed the loosened plank and took a swing at the creature. With a howling noise it disappeared into the crate again, but the snapping and biting noises didn’t stop. Two other sailors came running with a heavy wooden plate. Kirilov and the coxswain kept the plate down as the other sailors nailed it shut.  
‘What the hell was that?’ Yuri yelled, his voice cracking. Kirilov was unable to say anything. A crewmember brought cloth and cleaning alcohol for Yuri’s arm.  
‘Captain?’ the coxswain said. ‘Forgive me if I’m speaking out of turn, but I believe it’s best if we leave this crate behind whenever we can.’ Kirilov nodded, still shook up from what had just happened.  
‘Y-yes,’ he stammered. ‘That’s not a bad idea.’


	14. Chapter 14

Feldspar City was even bigger than it had seemed from atop the hill. Laura was amazed by everything she saw. Skye had flown far ahead and was now circling above the rooftops of the many houses in the city. Marshall and Terry casually strolled around, which gave Laura the opportunity to get a good look at everything. The buildings she saw could have just as easily come from a human city.  
‘I have so many questions…’ she whispered. Terry laughed.  
‘Ask away.’  
‘How did you all make this?’ Laura asked, full of wonder.   
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ Terry smiled. ‘The humans have always just seen the destructive side of Pokémon, not the useful side. We have entire teams of construction workers that make the houses and other buildings around here.’  
‘Really? What kind of Pokémon are in those teams?’  
‘Some obvious ones, like Conkeldurr, Excadrill and Machamp. Lots of rock and ground type Pokémon, who help in shaping the area. They can easily bring a block of stone forward that can then be shaped into a house.’  
Skye came flying back, in her claw holding an apple that she dropped in Laura’s hands. Laura looked at the fruit with a mixture of surprise and skepticism.   
‘Go ahead, try it,’ Skye said. Laura took a careful bite.  
‘Oh wow!’ she cried out. ‘This is amazing!’  
‘Our farmers create fine food,’ Marshall grinned. ‘Some products are even better than their human-made counterparts.’ Laura gazed around some more. Although the city was absolutely stunning, it was rather dark in the cave. The massive rock ceiling didn’t allow any sunlight to come through.  
‘How can you cultivate anything in here? There is no natural sunlight.’  
‘But plenty of artificial light,’ Terry said. ‘Many grass type Pokémon have plenty of powers that allow them to simulate sunlight, which is just as effective as real sunlight for growing food. The water Pokémon provide whatever water we need. Combine the two, and you have a well-functioning agricultural industry and a constant supply of food regardless of the season.’  
‘And of course that sunlight provides you all with the light for this city too,’ Laura filled in the blanks for herself.  
‘True, we use that to give ourselves some idea of day and night,’ Marshall said. ‘Much like you people, we also have street lights, although they’re more similar to your older systems: metal cups of oil that are lit on fire. Some Pokémon are capable of summoning eternal fire, but we only use that in the most important places. And then there’s that.’ Marshall pointed to the giant tower Laura had seen from the hill. It rose high above the other buildings, and could be seen from almost every point in the city. It reached so high that it almost touched the ceiling above the city. Now that she was closer to it, Laura could see that the tower contained many small windows that looked over Feldspar City. She also noticed something that she had seen from the hill but didn’t really register through all her excitement: at the top of the tower was a source of light, that was being reflected through many different metallic and glass contraptions, similar to a lighthouse.  
‘That pillar is our scientific center,’ Terry said. ‘Inside it are chambers, laboratories, research labs, our library and many other things that can help us with whatever improvements we need. It houses our best scientific mind and our greatest engineers and mechanics. Every now and then, they send Pokémon with light-based powers up to that room to create that light you see. And they have also figured out how to mimic the mechanism behind a Klinklang, combine it with the power and energy from electric Pokémon, and create the machinery necessary to open up the ceiling of this cave.’  
Laura was astonished at the thought of it alone. ‘You can actually split the ground open?’ Marshall nodded proudly, as if he came up with it himself. ‘They call it “The Gyre”, a gigantic round structure atop the pillar that is directly connected with the ceiling. It’s our greatest invention, and we will probably never use it. If we open up this ceiling, our world is completely exposed to that of the humans. There’s a saying around here that goes: “When the Gyre starts spinning, the time of Feldspar City has come to an end”. Much to the disappointment of the Air Brigade, who would love to use it to go out into the world.’  
‘You’ve mentioned the Air Brigade a few times now,’ Laura remarked, ‘but I still have no idea what that is.’  
‘The Air Brigade,’ Skye said as she came down, ‘is basically our air force. It’s entirely made up of Pokémon that can fly or levitate. They keep watch over our city, make sure that everything goes smoothly and are usually the first Pokémon there when something goes wrong. Whenever something is happening outside of Feldspar City, they get sent in to assess the situation and see if any help is needed. You might have seen them in that rock wall where we entered the city, that’s where most of them live, although some have taken residence up in the city. That Flygon you saw is called Ace, she is the leader of the Air Brigade and one of the most respected Pokémon in this city.’  
‘Speaking of our entrance into the city… What happened there? How did we get through the wall?’  
‘That was the work of our great security team,’ Terry said. ‘Skye and Marshall notified the guards, so they would open the gate for us. Obviously, that’s not a real gate, otherwise we’d run the risk of humans finding out. Anyway, once the guards know there is somebody on the other side, it’s up to the Gatekeeper, that Claydol you saw. He decides whether or not somebody can enter.’  
‘How does he do that?’  
‘You saw those ten eyes of his? Well, every eye has a different function. One of those can see through walls, another can read the intentions of people and Pokémon.’  
‘When Claydol approves of you, the other Pokémon open the gate for you,’ Marshall took over. ‘You know what happens next, you went through the tunnel yourself. If something would go wrong, the guards on the ground and the Air Brigade can quickly intervene. After the guards close the tunnel up again, there is no trace left at the other side of the wall, and no human can find it.’  
‘I have another question,’ Laura said.  
‘Of course you do,’ Skye mumbled.  
‘Hey, you said you would answer all my questions!’  
‘Just for the record: Terry and Marshall said that, not me. I’m a lady of nobility, not a tour guide!’  
‘Skye, play nice,’ Terry said. ‘What do you want to know Laura?’  
‘You were talking about that Flygon earlier – what was her name? Ace? She is a lot bigger than I had thought. Meanwhile the Blastoise I met at the zoo was tiny for how big a Blastoise can get. What’s up with that?’  
‘The size of Pokémon can differ per individual,’ Marshall said. ‘When Pokémon get older, they get larger. This process never ends. For example, Skye’s father is a lot taller than her brothers, even though they are all Staraptor. Ace is a lot older than we are, that’s why she’s so big. But the strongest Pokémon, they are able to control their own size. It takes an insane amount of strength and energy to do this, that’s why most Pokémon won’t bother with it unless it’s necessary for their survival, like with Blastoise. If Blastoise wouldn’t control himself, he wouldn’t be able to fit into the average house here in Feldspar City. But because he does, he can easily fit in with the giant turtles in the zoo.’  
‘So can you control your size?’  
Terry nodded. ‘We first stage Pokémon don’t grow as fast as last stage Pokémon, but we too grow as we get older. The three of us like staying relatively small. Since we’re quite young – and again, first stage – we don’t have to put in as much energy to keep this size. For us it’s more like… like carrying an empty backpack around for a few hours. Blastoise has to actively fight his own body every second of every day. If he would channel that energy into something else… well, I can only imagine what kind of force he could unleash upon his enemies.’  
‘So Ace just lets herself grow freely?’ Marshall nodded confirming. ‘But if Ace is that old, can she still properly lead the Air Brigade?’  
The Pokémon burst out in laughter. ‘You better make sure she doesn’t hear you say that,’ Terry chuckled.  
‘I forgot that you humans work differently,’ Marshall said. ‘For Pokémon, old age isn’t connected to frailty, in fact it’s the opposite. The older we get, the stronger, faster, wiser and just all around more powerful we become. The peak of our power is right before the moment we die of old age.’  
‘But most Pokémon do become less energetic in their old age,’ Terry added. ‘They sleep a lot, lay on the ground most of the time, until one day they simply don’t get up at all. We don’t know when that moment comes, but even in their later days most Pokémon can easily live through a battle. They simply don’t have the motivation for it anymore.’  
Before Laura could ask any more questions, Ace rejoined them again. ‘The Pack will meet you in the central plaza. Don’t keep them waiting, you know they don’t like that.’ Ace immediately flew back to the gate. Marshall turned to his friends.  
‘You heard the lady, we can’t keep the Pack waiting.’ He had barely finished his sentence before he started running. Skye joined him up in the air, and Terry started running too. Luckily for Laura, she had significantly longer legs than the small Pokémon, allowing her to keep up with them with relative ease.  
‘Say Terry,’ she asked the little bear, considering he was a lot more talkative than Marshall, ‘what is “The Pack”?’  
‘The Pack is our police force. When the Air Brigade notices problems in the city, they alert the Pack so they can solve it together. The Pack consists only of Pokémon that look like dogs, wolves, foxes or other canines. There are no real laws in here, since there is no official governing body, but the Pack and the Air Brigade prevent most problems around here.’  
‘How can this city function if there are no laws or rulers? Doesn’t that just lead to complete chaos?’  
‘Not really. The Pokémon here have no other choice than to live in this city. They all want the same thing: to stay alive and to not be hunted by the humans. The Pokémon know they can only do this by working together. Every now and then there’s a little incident, but the Pack and the Air Brigade always defuse the situation properly.’  
As Laura looked around, she realized that Terry was right. The Pokémon of Feldspar lived together in peace without any issues. Grass and water Pokémon walked together to the edge of the city, probably to go to the fields and orchards. A group of rock Pokémon removed stones together that showed a new patch of ground. A different group of Pokémon immediately jumped into action to support it with beams and rocks. A new house was probably being made there. Pokémon of colliding types were casually chatting in the streets, and cheerful sounds could be heard from the houses. The Pokémon had indeed built a nice life for themselves.  
After a while, the houses and buildings faded over into a large open plaza. The edge of the plaza was made up of several large buildings. In each building, Laura could see Pokémon, all of the same type. She also noticed that the buildings had architectural connections to the types. The building that seemed to be built out of a tree housed a lot of grass type Pokémon. A dark brown building, which was made up of gigantic rocks stacked on top of each other, was filled with rock Pokémon, and a large red building harbored fire Pokémon.  
‘What are those buildings?’ she asked softly.  
‘Those are the embassies,’ Marshall replied. ‘Although our society functions rather well, most Pokémon still feel more comfortable knowing that somebody of their own type represents their interests. Every embassy has their own ambassador, but you probably won’t see them. Only when something has gone disastrously wrong are the ambassadors called into conclave.’  
‘I don’t see a water embassy,’ Laura remarked. Water was her personal favorite type, and she had immediately started looking for it as soon as Marshall explained the idea of the buildings. The Mudkip smiled and pointed to an open spot between two buildings. Laura could only see a small puddle, with a little stream of water running from it.   
‘That puddle over there is our embassy. The ambassador isn’t here right now, she’s in the lake where that stream flows to. It’s probably best if you never actually get to see the ambassadors: that means all is going well in this town.’  
The rest of the plaza contained a few market carts and stalls, containing several goods. The farmers presented their crops and produce on little tables and crates. Much to her surprise, Laura saw the Pokémon just take the food and not pay anything for it. Terry noticed her surprise.  
‘We don’t have any money around here. We have something akin to a trading economy. The farmers produce the food and keep enough for themselves to survive. The rest they offer up here or on the other market squares. In exchange for the food, they can expect help from the other Pokémon when they need it. Everybody has something to offer, whether its food, goods or services. Because we have no money, there is no wealth or poverty, therefore no inequality, greed or power. Everybody helps each other, so everybody can profit.’  
In the center of the plaza stood a large Scizor. With his pincers in the air he yelled across the plaza:  
‘It is time to take up action! For too long we have stood idly by. It is true: this place has been good to us. But for how much longer? How long can we keep our wonderful city a secret from the humans?’ Then he noticed Laura. With an opened pincer he pointed at her and her three companions. ‘How can we keep our city strong and beautiful when humans are just let in here freely? How can we sleep easily and raise our children, knowing that a human walks within our borders? Our ambassadors tell us they listen to us, the Air Brigade and the Pack say they keep our safety at heart. But if that is the case, I ask you: how did this human enter our city? I say to you: we cannot sit and wait until the humans come to us. No! We must step up and be the first to strike! We must seek them out and let them know that we belong in this world as well. We cannot cower away underground; we have to take back the surface world! Follow me, and I will promise you that you will never have to fear the humans again!’  
‘Who is that?’ Laura asked, slightly frightened.   
‘He calls himself Spartacus,’ Marshall answered. ‘For years now he has been calling for the Pokémon to fight back against the humans. He believes he’s freeing the Pokémon from slavery, which is why he chose the name Spartacus, after the man who started the slave rebellion in ancient Rome.’  
‘Most Pokémon don’t pay much attention to him,’ Skye said. ‘Sadly though, more and more Pokémon begin to share his ideas. When nobody makes a fuzz, everything runs smoothly here in Feldspar City. But when somebody like Spartacus comes along, the Pokémon start doubting whether everything is indeed going well. We don’t have anything to complain about, and the Pokémon know that. Spartacus is just creating doubt and uncertainty.’  
‘We don’t like him,’ Terry added, unnecessarily.  
At that moment, a large group of Pokémon entered the plaza at high speed. At the head of the group ran a large Houndoom. Behind him Laura saw Houndour, Mightyena, Granbull, Arcanine, Furfrou, Ninetales, Manectric, Lycanroc and many other Pokémon, all of whom shared similarities with canine animals. Marshall stretched his little paw out to the group.  
‘Laura, let me introduce you to the Pack.’ The Houndoom in the front came running towards them. ‘And this is their leader: Hunter.’ Hunter granted Laura a short nod and then shifted his attention to Spartacus.  
‘I thought we had an agreement, Spartacus,’ he yelled across the plaza. His voice sounded calm, but dark and stern. He did remind Laura of a policeman: somebody you’d fear and respect at the same time. Spartacus made a snorting noise.  
‘I’m only telling these good Pokémon here the truth. A human entered this city, under your watch! And not only that, but your friend Ace has personally let her into the city, and now your little group of lapdogs is just walking by that human without doing anything against her!’  
Laura clenched her fists in anger. She already couldn’t stand Spartacus. Behind her, the Pack started growling angrily at Spartacus’s insults, but Hunter seemed to remain calm. And he still remained calm when he slowly and very intimidatingly walked towards Spartacus. Amused, Laura watched Spartacus take a few steps back. By now, Hunter was so close he could close his jaws around Spartacus’s neck if he wanted to.  
‘This is your final chance,’ he growled. The calm was gone from his voice, making him even more intimidating. ‘If you threaten or insult me, Ace, the Pack or the Brigade ever again, or lie to the honest Pokémon of this city, then you will be banished. And trust me when I say that we will find out, no matter how sneaky you try to do it.’ Hunter turned around again to the Pack.  
‘I’m not done with you!’ Spartacus yelled at Hunters back. In a flash, Hunter turned around and snapped his jaws at Spartacus. He held back just enough to not actually bite the Scizor, but got close enough to make Spartacus fall down out of fear. Hunter walked back to the Pack and made a head gesture at a Mightyena.  
‘No time to walk,’ he said to Laura. Only now could she see how big he actually was. Hunters head was slightly higher than her own. ‘Climb on his back. Marshall, Terry! You’re with the Manectric.’  
With some effort, Laura climbed on the back of the Mightyena. Marshall was clearly not at ease, riding on the back of an electric Pokémon, but he kept quiet. After a short command by Hunter, the Pack started moving as one, dashing through the streets of Feldspar City.


	15. Chapter 15

Laura had ridden on the back of horses before, but that was with a saddle. Riding on a Mightyena, without a saddle, amidst a pack of Pokémon, that was a completely different experience. The houses and Pokémon flashed by, the only things she could see clearly were the other Pokémon of the Pack. She saw Hunter tirelessly running through the streets, she saw Marshall being clearly uncomfortable on the back of the Manectric, she saw Terry enjoying himself on the back of another Manectric, and she saw Skye flying above them, faster than Laura had ever seen her fly.  
And just like that, the entire Pack stood still at the exact same time. Laura almost fell from the Mightyena because of the suddenness. Marshall and Terry jumped to the ground and Skye rejoined them too. Much to her surprise, Laura noticed that they had left Feldspar City. To her left she saw the wall through which they entered. In front of her was a new cavern wall, but this one had a clear entrance, although it was currently blocked by a large number of boulders. Next to the entrance stood two Machamp, who at Hunters signal started removing the boulders. Marshall and Hunter entered the passageway, followed by Skye and Terry. The rest of the Pack turned around and went back into the city. Laura followed the Pokémon into the new tunnel, not sure of what to expect.  
This tunnel was a lot shorter than the one she entered Feldspar through. Almost immediately she reached the next room. She was pleasantly surprised to find this room a lot brighter than the rest of the city.  
‘Where are we?’ She had started whispering without even noticing it.  
‘This is a volcanic crater,’ Ace said. Laura was startled when the Flygon suddenly stood next to her. ‘The volcano has died out long ago, but through mirrors, Pokémon powers and some tricks from the geniuses in the Science Pillar, we can reflect the natural sunlight into this chamber without being visible from the outside.’  
‘Why am I here?’ Laura asked.  
‘Because of me,’ a deep dark voice slowly said. The voice was deeper, more powerful than those of the other Pokémon she met, even Blastoise. A heap, which she first thought was just a small mountain, suddenly started moving. The upper layers of the mountain turned out to be two leathery, purple wings. Underneath the wings came a long, pointy tail and two legs with enormous claws. The head of the Pokémon was oblong, and the upper jaw ended in a sharp point. When the Aerodactyl had stretched out completely, several Pokémon came rushing to him from the holes in the wall to help with whatever needed to be done.  
Hunter softly pushed Laura towards the colossal beast. Fearfully Laura shuffled towards him.  
‘You don’t have to fear me, human,’ the Aerodactyl spoke. The echo of his voice made it sound like the entire cave was talking to her. ‘The times when I killed humans are far behind me.’ For some reason, this didn’t really comfort Laura. She had reached the head of Aerodactyl in the meantime. His eye alone was as big as she was.  
‘Am I correct in assuming that you took part in the first P-Day?’ she asked respectfully. Aerodactyl laughed, which practically caused an earthquake in the cave. ‘Took part? I set them all up!’  
‘All? I thought there had only been one?’  
‘Of course not, foolish human. I have lived over four thousand years. In those years, there have been more wars than you could possibly imagine. In the Pokémon world at least as many as in the human world. Some saw Pokémon and humans on opposite sides, others saw Pokémon fighting each other, and in some cases, it was impossible to tell who was fighting who. There have been at least ten P-Days. Of course, they weren’t called that way back then, that only happened after the Second World War.’  
‘So the most recent P-Day was during the Second World War?’  
Aerodactyl let out an annoyed sigh, thereby creating a gust of wind that lifted Skye off the ground. ‘Have you learned nothing of us human? The most recent P-Day happened much further back! After our attempts to regain our place in the human world, the Americans, the French and the Dutch revolted too, like many others around the whole world. Our fight hasn’t been recorded in your history books, but make no mistake: Napoleon and Washington learned from us.’  
‘So what happened? Why could they achieve what you couldn’t?’ Aerodactyl let out another sigh. This time Ace was lifted off the ground.  
‘We did not trust each other. We had every type of Pokémon grouped together: big, small, fast, slow, strong, smart, and Pokémon of all twenty-five types.’ Laura raised her eyebrows: she only knew eighteen types. ‘We even had a Lugia.’  
‘A Lugia? You mean there are multiple?’ It was difficult to fully read Aerodactyls reaction since Laura could only see one eye, but he seemed annoyed.  
‘There is still so much you need to learn, human, far more than I am able and willing to teach you today. Either way, because we had that many different Pokémon, there were polar opposites. The grass type Pokémon did not want to stand in front of the fire type Pokémon, fearing that the latter would burn them. The water and flying Pokémon wanted to keep the electric Pokémon completely out of the battle since they would pose too much of a risk. In the end, tensions got so high that a Venusaur in a blind rage attacked our Lugia and killed it. The result was an all-out war between the two sides. Many good Pokémon died in that war. Too many.’ Aerodactyl paused for a moment to catch his breath.  
‘So you locked yourself in here?’ Laura asked. Aerodactyl scoffed. ‘I’m not locked up. I can leave whenever I want. I just don’t want to leave anymore. I don’t care one bit what happens out there. Look at those two.’ Laura looked at Hunter and Ace. ‘They are now my protectors. My guardians. Do you have any idea how many “guardians” I have had? We would not have the time to go over all their names, even if I hadn’t forgotten them. During my life I have known so many humans and Pokémon, but I can’t recall any of their names.’  
‘But you can’t stay here!’ Laura said angrily. ‘The Pokémon need you! They brought me on, you can’t just give up now!’  
‘And why not?’ Aerodactyl’s tone got madder, more aggressive. ‘Do you think I think for even one second about what happens to a few Pokémon? About what happens to you? I am older than most of your so-called “civilizations”. I have seen countries come into existence and disappear again. Why would I bother with this miserable tiny town?’  
‘Some day you will regret this. When this P-Day succeeds, you will wish you were involved.’  
‘Naïve little creature,’ Aerodactyl grunted. ‘You are supposed to help? To lead them? This arrogance of yours will kill you!’  
With clenched fists of rage Laura walked back to the entrance. Hunter and Ace cleared the way for them all. Laura was glad to be out of Aerodactyl’s chamber and looking over Feldspar City again.  
‘That was very brave of you,’ Terry said. ‘Standing up to Aerodactyl like that, to say that you will still follow through on P-Day.’  
‘But should I though?’ Laura said angrily. She wasn’t sure who she was angry with. ‘I mean you heard him: the one Pokémon that has been the most involved in P-Day since the very beginning, doesn’t want to have anything to do with it now. If he’s out, then what on earth am I supposed to do? I’m just a girl, I have no powers or might or influence. Aerodactyl withdrew from it all, Spartacus is already riling up the city against me. How can I contribute anything? How am I supposed to help?’  
There was an awkward silence among the Pokémon for a moment. Then Marshall stepped forward. The others looked at him with a warning look in their eyes.  
‘Come,’ he said. ‘I want to show you something.’

_Poison. One of the oldest weapons in existence. It can be found plentiful in nature. Snakes poison their prey. Insects leave tiny bits of poison when stinging humans or animals. Some plants have poison in their leaves, thorns or fruits. Humans use poison to turn the food of their enemies into a deadly weapon. Other weapons are altered with poison, making even the slightest scratch fatal. Poison is seen as a cowardly weapon, something to use when you’re too afraid to meet your opponent on the battlefield. And yet despite its lethal characteristics, in the right amounts poison can be used as a medicine or antidote to certain diseases. It has symbolized treason, untrustworthiness and lies in art and literature. To poison one’s body can be an easy way to take out an opponent. But to poison one’s mind can be true torture._


	16. Chapter 16

The nightly air felt pleasant to Tyson. The evenings in the summer were one of his favorite moments of the year. The heat of the day had subsided a bit, but it was still warm enough for a nice evening walk. The setting sun colored the sky red and orange, and gave this park a beautiful scenery, almost as if it was taken from a painting.  
He sat down on a bench to enjoy the view for a moment. The park was nearly empty, except for a few joggers here and there. A few birds were flying back and forth from their nests, and in the ever-growing shadows he thought he could see a squirrel run up a tree.  
He had decided to do this more often. The mockery of his friends in the bar a few days ago had made him doubt his own instincts. Maybe they were right. Maybe he was just being a little paranoid. Maybe it was the alcohol playing tricks with his mind. Maybe it was all in his head. So he decided to go out a little more, enjoy nature and the serenity of these moments and just let his suspicions drift away.  
Next to the bench, Tyson saw a black caterpillar crawl on the grass. With a smile on his face he dropped down to look at the bug.  
‘Hello there little one. Come to enjoy the sunset too? My, you’re a strange one.’ Frowning, he looked at the creature. It wasn’t like any caterpillar he had ever seen. Whereas most were just one continuous blob, this one had a clear head and body, with a white furry collar separating the two. It seemed to move on just two small legs instead of the entire body dragging it forth. The head was also far too big for its body. It should be impossible for the little bug to keep its head up, let alone walk on those two hind legs. A sudden feeling of fear crept up on Tyson.  
‘I don’t think you are supposed to exist…’ he whispered. The caterpillar seemed to look at him – no, he was definitely looking at him! Suddenly a black powder spewed from its mouth and onto Tysons hand. Tyson immediately pulled his hand back and tried to shake the powder off, but a stinging feeling in his hand prevented him from moving it. The feeling spread through his arm, down his body to his legs.   
‘What is… help! Somebody help!’ He was completely unable to move any of the muscles beneath his neck. He wanted to jump up, run, but he couldn’t; he could only scream.  
In front of him appeared two eyes without a body, partially hidden away in the shrubbery.  
‘Stop screaming, or you will only make this worse,’ an unknown voice said threateningly. Tyson stopped and tried hard not to let the terror that ran through him show.  
‘I was right, wasn’t I.’ He tried to sound as confident as possible. ‘I _am_ being followed. Something really is going on here.’  
The two eyes looked at him menacingly. ‘You have seen far too much,’ the voice said, as the two eyes started glowing.


	17. Chapter 17

Marshall led Laura and the others to yet another hill, somewhere between the gate and Aerodactyl’s chamber. Laura had noticed it before, mainly because a faint light seemed to come from behind the hill. Marshall confidently walked to the rear end of the hill, towards the source of the light, while the rest of the Pokémon still seemed uncomfortable with the situation.  
Behind the hill stood several trees, against one of which a large Tsareena was sitting. A Sunflora created the sunlight that Laura had seen earlier, shining on the Tsareena while a Palpitoad softly sprayed water on it. The Tsareena didn’t seem to respond to any of it.  
‘What’s wrong with her?’ Laura asked. She carefully approached the Pokémon, but she didn’t even seem to notice the girl.  
‘Stayed in a Poké Ball for too long,’ Marshall responded softly. ‘Her mind is gone; she barely even registers things that happen around her… or to her. This is where we bring them, to have some kind of comfort still. We have some Pokémon who care for her, and others like her.’  
‘For how long?’ Laura asked. Tears started welling up in her eyes. She already knew the answer that Terry was going to give.  
‘For as long as we consider fitting. And if after that there is no sign of improvement…’  
‘It’s the only merciful thing to do,’ Ace said in a somber tone. Laura now noticed that a little further back, behind the trees, several small stones were placed on a field of flowers. She didn’t need to ask; she already knew what they meant. Marshall took her away from the Tsareena.  
‘This is how you can help Laura. You asked how you were supposed to contribute? This is it. You can prevent this from happening to any more Pokémon. You can spare them this fate. You can make sure that we don’t have to do the merciful thing. Help us by breaking the Poké Balls, and save the captured Pokémon before they end up here too.’  
Laura wiped the tears from her eyes and nodded. ‘What would you have me do?’  
‘Go home for now. Hunter will bring you to the gate. Take a few days to let everything you’ve learned sink in. After that, we will seek contact with you again. We will stay here, gather all the Poké Balls we can find, and we will bring them to you to destroy.’  
Terry joined them and put his paw against Laura’s leg. ‘Don’t worry. We promised you we would keep you safe, and we will. I keep my promises.’  
Laura smiled, said goodbye to the three small Pokémon and climbed on Hunters back. One last time she looked at her companions and at Feldspar city. Then Hunter dashed away towards the gate.


	18. Chapter 18

Farley stared at the salesman with a frightened look. The man screamed at him in a language which he did not understand and made many angry hand gestures while doing so. Carefully Farley took the figs out of his pocket again. The man now got even more angry. From all around people came to see what was happening, and they all looked at Farley. He couldn’t stand the attention. The unknown emotion came to the surface again, even stronger than last time. Farley had to try his hardest to not let the emotion take control of him.  
Farley slipped the figs back into his pocket. The man now got furious and grabbed a big knife from his cart. Farley became frightened, but he had no idea what to do. The unknown emotion seared through his body; his heart was pounding in his chest.  
With a swift move the salesman grabbed Farley’s wrist and pressed it down on the table in front of him. in doing so, he removed Farley’s glove. The screams of the salesman weren’t angry screams anymore, but surprised ones. With a quick jab, he cut through the cloth that Farley had put in front of his face.  
The people around him started screaming and gasping. A woman did what he had seen the monks in the mountains do often: she got on her knees and started praying. Two other men now approached him too, both armed with knives. Farley could no longer control the unknown emotion. The rage took hold of him and controlled his entire body. Quick as lightning, he struck at the neck of the salesman. The razor-sharp spike at the end of his arm buried itself in the soft flesh of the man’s neck. For a brief moment the man was gasping for air, but with a gurgling sound he quickly drew his last breath. With equally quick moves, Farley killed the other two attackers. During the attack his hood slipped back and his other glove fell to the ground.  
Quickly Farley analyzed the situation. Everything started moving faster now that he had let the unknown emotion in. From different directions, he could see seven men approaching, all armed. Farley dropped his coat to be able to move faster, and kicked off his boots. The seven men charged at him, but Farley was too fast for them. Before any of them could even swing at him, three laid dead on the ground already. The other four fought back for just a moment, but they too had not long to live. The rage and adrenaline soared through every inch of him. He enjoyed the feeling.  
‘These were evil men,’ a voice said in the back of his head. The voice sounded familiar. Farley had heard it before, in the Himalayas, but back then it was a soft whispering, not audible. Now the voice was loud and clear. In the Himalayas, the voice had scared him. Now he knew no fear. ‘Repeat after me: these were evil men.’  
‘These were evil men,’ Farley repeated out loud.  
‘They certainly were,’ the voice said. Farley looked around, to the people who had stared at him, the people who had frightened him, the people who had taken everything from him. ‘These are all evil men.’  
‘These are all evil men,’ Farley repeated out loud. Without hesitation, he cut the rest of his clothes and ran to the person closest to him. Within seconds, five more people laid dead on the ground.  
As Farley pulled the spike from one of the dead bodies, he felt different. The blood that streamed over his arm did not feel unnatural, but nice and pleasant. He felt himself change, not just mentally but physically too. He felt larger, faster, strong.  
A group of policemen came running towards Farley, all of them armed. Farley prepared himself and dashed towards the officers. As if he were in a trance, he attacked them. All of them. One by one they fell down without even getting a scratch on Farley.  
The Farley that had to watch his mother being dragged away was gone. The Farley that was chased out of the Himalayas no longer existed. This Farley made his own decisions in life. This Farley let nobody tell him what to do. This Farley let nobody mess with him, he struck back and took revenge on all the evil men.  
Farley had evolved.

_Fighting. The primal nature of humanity. For millennia, people have proven their worth through combat. Survival of the fittest. The strongest rule the planet. The strongest get the fame, the glory, the riches. Weapons, invasions, wars. History books are filled with them. Technological advancement is measured in the amount of people one weapon can kill, how fast weapons can kill. Fighting breaks families, tears nations apart, destroys entire civilizations. And yet sometimes, fighting is the only solution. Sometimes a man has to fight to save his own life or that of the ones he loves.  
_


End file.
